


Black Feather

by tikistitch



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, F/M, Humor, M/M, Plotty, Wingfic, and they're Diathim, anyway, because this is the star was universe, does anybody actually read all these tags, not angels, probs not - Freeform, the angels have wings in this one, thus the title, well sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-31
Updated: 2015-01-19
Packaged: 2018-03-04 11:36:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 47,087
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3066410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tikistitch/pseuds/tikistitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Star Wars: The Old Republic AU.  Bounty hunters Sam and Dean Winchester journey to the Outer Rim planet of Tatooine, on the trail of the Jedi master, Castiel, who's been frozen in carbonite by a double-dealing smuggler named Gabriel.  The plot thickens when the new headmaster of the Sith Academy, Darth Abaddon, takes an interest in luring young Sam into serving as her new apprentice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is set more or less around the time of Knights of the Old Republic. Sam goes kind of dark in this one, kiddies, though everything is well by the end, if you don't like Sammy making some bad decisions, then avoid this one! There is some Sam/Ruby: not much, but just warning in case you can't stand that ship. I've tried to be true to the Star Wars universe as much as possible, but I'm most familiar with the film version, and not so much the expanded universe, so you will forgive the occasional transgression of that canon. I've also made a hash of the canon on Diathim, but I thought it would be a good way to incorporate angels into the universe. Also, since George Lucas has been a bit elusive about naming Yoda's exact species, I've identified one Jedi Master only as a tridactyl (that's why she talks like Yoda). 
> 
> The manuscript for this one came in at around 40,000 words. I'm estimating that it will be 6 chapters long, but I haven't broken it down yet since I'm still editing. [Update: probably 7 chapters total, but maybe 8 if those last chapters foof out when I'm editing them.)
> 
> One last thing I should mention: this came from a really cool anon prompt on the SPN Kink meme, so shoutout to the nonny.

_Millius Prime, many years ago…._

The planet Iego hung big and bright in the skies of its moon, Millius Prime. The sky was clear today, Iego's other moons dotting the horizon like so many tiny pearls. If you looked closely, you could see all the way to the Scatter.

Young Castiel held tight to his elder brother's hand as they walked. Castiel was most favored of his people, the Diathim: he lived in a grand palace high on a hill! So of course, his only wish was to go forth and roam outside. Sadly, he was rarely allowed to venture out, and then only in the company of an elder brother or a nursemaid. 

He liked his big brothers – he really did. Although Gabriel and Loki, who were closest to him in age, tended to tease him. Lucifer, who was much older and quite tall and handsome, with lush golden-feathered wings, used to wink at him. But then Lucifer had gone away, and even asking about him or where he'd gone made people sad, so after a while, little Castiel had stopped asking. Lucifer hadn’t gone away like Castiel’s mother had gone away, but somehow, it was just as final.

Today he was in the company of his older brother, Raphael. Castiel loved Raphael, but the glum teen often appeared distracted, always tagging along after Michael with an air of anticipation. They had many hushed discussions regarding Lucifer, but Castiel was never involved. He wasn't yet old enough for such things. 

Today Raphael had led him on a route that meandered near the edge a sheer cliff that bordered the eastern grounds of the palace. The canyon boasted gusty winds, so the more daring sorts would break out their wings and glide down to the canyon floor. Though the Diathim were a winged people, they could not achieve true flight, even in the low gravity of their homeworld. But with the aid of a prevailing breeze and a little gumption, they could sustain a rather prolonged ride down the wind. At Castiel's insistence, he and Raphael had stood for a while, side by side, watching the wind riders in flight, white and gold and silver and orange and red feathers rushing to meet the magical air. 

“Brother mine,” said Castiel. “I should like to try this some day!”

“Hmpf!” sniffed Raphael, tugging a reluctant little brother away from the edge. “A shocking display. They should not have their wings out in public like that.” It was true: as Castiel understood, having ones wings out was something that was not done in polite company. He was also given to understand that, as his birthright, he _was_ polite company, even though Loki and Gabriel often took out their wings for wrestling and suchlike. 

“But what are wings, if not to ride the air?” asked little Castiel, trying to match his brother's long strides.

“It is a vain undertaking, young brother mine. Leave it to the ninnies and nabobs. You were meant for more serious pursuits.”

Castiel wondered what those serious pursuits might be? He cast a longing glance back over his shoulder as his brother led him back towards the palace where he whiled away his days, mostly in solitude. 

They arrived back to find some rather exciting news, at least in Castiel's opinion: they had guests! Strangers didn’t often make it all the way to the Outer Rim, and especially not to dim, isolated planet such as Iego.

A few figures, dressed in robes and carrying exotic laser swords snapped to their belts, were standing in the middle of the grand throne room, talking to Michael. The throne itself, of course, was empty, as their father rarely received guests nowadays. Michael always courteously sat in the chair off to one side, which was where he was sitting right now.

“To talk to Lord Shurley, we would prefer,” one of the newcomers was saying. She was a small green tridactyl, about Castiel's height. She rested her weight on a gnarled cane. She was speaking an oddly accented galactic Basic, which Castiel understood, having had only the best tutors.

“As I have told you, Master, I am his representative,” Michael huffed. “Besides, we have no business with Jedi.”

“What are Jedi?” Castiel whispered to Raphael. He had never heard of that species. 

Raphael hushed him, but to his astonishment, the tridactyl turned and cast her eyes on him. She was obviously quite old, but her eyes were sharp and intelligent. “We serve the Republic, my young lord,” she told him. “And we seek younglings such as yourselves to join our ranks.”

“Castiel, isn't it long past your bedtime?” asked Michael. He was glaring at Raphael.

“It's nowhere near that time,” Castiel patiently explained to his older brother. Michael had much on his mind, and couldn't be expected to remember such trivia as Castiel’s bedtime. “How may I serve the Republic?” he inquired of the tridactyl.

“We are seeking younglings to be trained as Jedi knights.”

“Jedi knights?” asked Castiel. He had heard stories about knights and their bold adventures, but he had thought they were just fairy tales. 

“Your people, the Diathim, strong in the Force, they are. Serve us well, one of your number would.”

“Raphael!” called Michael. “You will remove Castiel from this room immediately.”

Raphael grabbed the young angel by the arm and yanked him away. “Making me look bad in front of my brother,” he muttered. “They were right about you, you are ill-fortuned, Castiel.”

“But, Raphael-”

“Go to your room!” Raphael barked as soon as they were out of earshot. And then he turned and marched right back towards the throne room. 

Castiel heaved a sad sigh and started towards the stairs that led to his room. Adults confused him. They wanted him to pursue serious matters, but he was unclear as to what constituted an appropriate activity. Why shouldn't he be a Jedi knight? He could channel the Force using his wings, the same as his brothers. In fact, his tutors said he was one of the best (they only said it out of what they though was his earshot, but Castiel had sharp ears). 

He paused at the first landing in front of a great, floor to ceiling window. He could look out here, over the cliffs, and just catch a glimpse of the brave gliders riding the wild air currents.

“You wanna go gliding, Cassie?”

“Yes, Loki.”

“I'm not Loki, I'm Gabriel!”

“You're Loki.”

Loki was hanging upside-down from the bannister, sticking his tongue out. 

“Why aren't you out playing with Gabriel?” Castiel asked.

“He's in our room, being punished for something.”

Castiel thought about this for a moment. It was unusual that Loki was on his own like this. 

“You didn't answer me, Cassie. You wanna go gliding?”

“Raphael already told me I'm not allowed.”

“Aw, come on. You gonna listen to that old fart-knocker?”

Castiel returned to gazing out the window. The feel of wind on his feathers … it was enticing. And the grownups all seemed to be occupied with the visitors. If he wasn't ready for adult stuff yet, then why not go gliding?

“Where? How?”

Loki hopped down and grabbed his hand. “Come on! Out the back way!”

The royal palace had originally been built as a fortification, and had been extended many times throughout the ages, so there were dozens and dozens of secret or little used passageways to explore. Castiel really hadn't been through the pathway Loki was taking now, but there were probably miles and miles of corridors in the old building. They sneaked out through a broken door (the hinges gave a pleasing squeak as they passed through) and ended up on the far end of the cliff where Castiel had been walking with Raphael, far enough away from the other gliders that they were mere specks in the distance.

Castiel walked all the way to the edge of the cliff and stared down. It was an awfully long way. “Can you feel the breeze, Cassie?” asked Loki. Castiel nodded. Yes, he could sense the warm drafts of air, wafting up from below. 

“I've never tried gliding before,” he confessed to Loki, who was already doffing his shirt.

“Get out your wings and I'll show you!”

“Are you sure that will be all right?” Castiel was under strict orders to never, ever show his wings outside of the palace. 

“You see anybody here? We're all alone, brother mine.” Gabriel had already unfolded his lush, golden brown wings.

Castiel hesitated, but the air smelled so sweet, he finally tugged off his jacket and then his shirt, revealing his back, which appeared to have two odd scars running down either side of his spine. He shrugged, and two great wings sprang from his back. He shook them out, feeling the breeze run through the feathers. It was absolutely lovely.

“C'mere,” said Loki, who was squatting at the edge, the breeze rippling his fine feathers. “Now, the secret is just to relax. Stretch your wings out as far as they'll go, and let the wind take you. Only one way to go, down, so you'll never get lost!” Castiel gazed at the valley below. It looked very peaceful, and there was a stream meandering through the very bottom. From here he could dimly see the other angels gliding at the spot where he’d stood with Raphael.

“I'll go first,” said Loki. He stood up, extended his wings and, without so much as a how do you do, hopped off the cliff and rode the wind. Castiel gasped. It looked marvelous! He watched his brother for a long moment, suspended in the air, hurtling away from him. Then, drawing up all his courage, he stretched out his wings and, giving himself a little running start, plunged off into the unknown.

As Loki had said, the air buffeted him, and he sailed, air rushing through his feathers. He let out a laugh, happy and free. He could see Loki up ahead, on his way down. Cas found if he brought in his wings just a touch, he sped a little faster, though he also fell down a little more rapidly that way, so he hurried to catch up with his brother. 

“Hey, Cassie!” shouted Loki. “Look! You're a natural.”

“Loki!” said Cas. He really couldn't think of anything else to say. He had never remembered being happier as he was right now, hanging in the air.

“Let me show you how to turn,” said Loki. He adjusted his wings, and banked below Castiel. Castiel attempted the same maneuver, and pulled it off quite well, though it appeared that this was another thing that caused you to fall faster. Loki made use of this and zig-zagged in the air, so of course Castiel had to try this as well. It wasn't long before they ran out of altitude, and Loki shouted, “Look out below!”

It was good that he warned Castiel, as he hadn't really been paying attention, what with all the fun of flight. He watched Loki as he landed, touching down gracefully and running a few paces. Castiel tried to duplicate this as best he could, and though he almost tripped, he managed without falling on his face. 

“Cassie, you're the best!” said Loki, slapping him playfully with a wing. Cas shoved back with a wingtip. For whatever reason, his wings were a source of unhappiness around the palace, so he rarely had them out. Extending his wings, and feeling the air rush over them, was utterly delicious.

“Wanna try again?” asked Loki. “We could climb back up. Maybe we could race down this time!”

Breathless and pink-cheeked, Cas nodded. Eagerly they climbed the stone stairway that had been carved into the cliff’s sheer side. 

“I'll show you some more tricks!” Loki promised as they reached the top. Loki hopped up to the top, out of sight. “You can loop-” But then, for some reason, he grew silent.

“What's the matter?” asked Cas as he too breached the top of the cliff. And then he saw.

_Michael._

“Castiel, what are you doing with your wings out in public? And Loki-”

“I'm Gabriel.”

“You're Loki! I know because Gabriel is already being punished.” Michael turned to Castiel. “I'm surprised at you, Castiel. Do you want to bring shame on your family?”

“I was just gliding,” said Castiel, arching up his wings in an irritated manner. “And nobody can see us here.”

“You know the rules!”

“They're dumb rules,” grumbled Loki.

“Loki, you are already in enough trouble as it is.”

“A problem there is?” asked the tridactyl, who had just strolled up as casually if she was out for an afternoon walk. Somehow, none of them had seen her coming. “Raised voices, did I hear.”

“Master,” said Michael, pointing to Castiel. “Now, perhaps you can see why my poor, deformed brother is unfit for the Jedi order.”

“I'm not unfit!” Castiel protested. 

“See this, I do not,” said the Jedi serenely. “Flying, the child was.” Castiel quieted his protest. Had she seen him?

“He is ill-favored,” countered Michael. “Can't you see his feathers?”

“See a child playing, I do,” said the little Jedi. “Favors, well or ill, I do not see.” And then she turned and, with a nod towards Castiel, walked off.

Michael turned back to the younglings, although some of the wind had been knocked from his sails. “Castiel. Loki. Both of you – to your rooms. Now!”

Castiel and Loki exchanged a glance. Both took off towards the palace. But, as if by some silent agreement, neither of them put away their wings.


	2. Chapter 2

_Ultare, capitol city the planet Andara, the Core Worlds, the present day…._

 

“And no disintegrations!” lectured the Imperial officer, waggling a stern finger in their faces.

Dean waited until the guy had passed them by, and then rolled his eyes at Sam. Sam was pretending to check his utility belt, but was actually casting a critical eye over the competition. It was the usual line up of the galaxy's scum and villainy, all packing heat, all checking each other out while pretending not to. A couple scruffy humans, a tall guy with eight multifaceted spider eyes, and one of the biggest, fattest Gungans he'd ever seen. There was one dude who was particularly interesting to Dean: a sour face with the body plan of a snake. His long, moist tail was actually wrapped around most of the meeting room, and was probably annoying the hell out of the sniveling little Imperial Officer, as he seemed to leave a trail of goo wherever he slunk. 

Maybe it was a slug guy instead of a snake guy, Dean thought, stifling a yawn.

“Am I boring you?” Quite suddenly, the Imperial officer was in Dean's face. Or rather, about a foot below Dean's face, scowling upwards. He was actually up on tiptoe in his tight boots, trying to loom, but not making a very good job of it. His species was more or less humanoid in body plan, but a bit on the furry side, and even stuffed into the smallest sized Imperial uniform, this guy couldn't help but resemble a rodent that had got up on its hind legs, seeking some cheese to nibble on.

Mmm, cheese. “Got any snacks? I'm a little hungry,” said Dean, rubbing the belly-plate on his much-dented armor. He could feel Sam tense up next to him. 

“Can we get on with it?” asked a scratched-up, copper-colored droid who, despite his inorganic design, somehow managed to stand at a slouch nearby. “I'm late to my maintenance appointment.”

Dean cracked a small smile. You could tell these Imperials had nothing but contempt for his kind, but, face it, bounty hunters were necessary. Troopers were just too damned thick-headed to catch a halfway decent criminal. Their solution would be to blow up the whole damn planet – well, if they could. Fortunately, they didn't have the firepower for something like that. So you could get away with serving a certain amount of sass right back at them. Kept them on their toes!

The rat-face officer sneered, but got back on track, marching up the line of bounty hunters, boot heels striking the marble floor. “It is also rumored that the suspect is an ex-Jedi.”

An audible moan went through the assemblage. “Why didn't you tell us that first?” grumbled a grey-furred old Wookiee through a crackling translator. Nabbing bank robbers was one thing, but trying to nail a Force sensitive guy? A whole 'nother ball of wax. Those dudes carried laser swords! Goodbye, extra limbs!

“It's not of import,” sneered the Imperial, to assorted grumbling and muttering from the peanut gallery. 

Dean glared over at Sam, not speaking, but easily communicating his thought: _did you know about this?_ His little brother pulled his best puppy-face in an attempt to appear innocent. 

 

They left the assembly soon afterwards, rushing a little to walk ahead of the slug guy so they wouldn't get ooze all over their boots. Although the meeting had actually taken place inside one of the grander Imperial government buildings (since Ultare was the capitol of Andara, and Andara was rich as fuck, the planet tended toward overkill in their architecture), the mercenaries were ushered out of a back doorway and ended up in a less than picturesque alleyway. _Along with the rest of the trash_ , Sam thought. It was weird to be out of the sterile white interior of an imperial building and into the hazy sunset sky of Andara. The whole city seemed washed in a dirty red color. 

The other mercs filtered off towards Ultare's busy streets, but Sam and Dean continued up the nearly deserted alley, towards where Dean had parked their speeder. Even in the middle of a bustling city, he refused to pay for parking. 

“A Jedi! Fuck me,” grumbled Dean.

“I didn't know, Dean,” shrugged Sam, toting his rifle over his broad shoulders. “Besides, we could use the credits! It's been a while since we've had a good job.”

“We could always play some sabaac,” Dean suggested.

“You mean _I_ could play some sabaac,” Sam retorted. He was having none of that.

“What is your big problem with a little bit of cheating at cards?” his brother asked.

“Because _I'm_ the one they try to kill when they figure it out, Dean!”

Dean cracked a grin. “Besides, you know I hate contract work for the Imperials. Too many fucking rules. Those guys are born with a rule stick up their asses.”

But Sam had grown wistful. “I coulda been one of them, Dean,” he whispered.

Sam was special, although just _how_ special was a very closely guarded secret. Even as a very small child he had displayed powers far beyond his years, as when he somehow managed to persuade the ill-tempered local candy merchant to grant him free bags of sweets. He was Force-sensitive. This kind of thing wasn’t unheard of in the Winchester line – family lore was that Grandpa Henry had been a Jedi or a Sith Lord or something of the sort. It was all a bit unclear. What _was_ clear was that Henry had abandoned his family, including his young son, John, early in the boy’s life to go off on some grand adventure. So when Sam started demonstrating that he had inherited more than his share of midichlorians, John put his foot down about any possibility of Sam following in the errant relative’s footsteps. He utterly forbid Sam from applying to the Sith Academy. And, given that they lived in the outer reaches of Imperial space, receiving training as a Jedi knight was not even worth a mention.

So Sam had confined his Force manipulation to simple tricks he had picked up here and there, grabbing weapons and prodding the weak-minded. He had proved especially adept at cheating at sabaac, although his talents also aided them immeasurably in the family business, which was hunting bad guys for fun and profit. 

But sometimes, it just all felt so small-time. 

“Why the hell would you wanna be an Imperial, Sammy? They're douches. Besides, what's wrong with what we're doing now?”

“Oh, other than being broke all the time and having people try to murder us? Dean, I was born with powers, and I feel like I'm just wasting them. I feel like I pulled a black feather at life, you know?” Sam had heard the deep space pilots trading stories and rumors about angels, but, unlike Dean, believed every word. They were supposed to be lovely creatures, fair of face. The rare ones born with dark-feathered wings, however, were supposed to be harbingers of ill fortune. 

Dean didn't believe all the stuff about harbingers, of course. Dean probably couldn't even spell “harbinger.” “You're puttin' the Force great use,” he said now, “cheating at cards!”

Sam was grumbling a reply, but suddenly Dean grabbed his brother's arm, pulling him into the shadows at the side of the alleyway. “What? Was I gonna step in that slug guy's goo?” Sam asked, frowning down at his boots. He'd just bought some new ones!

Dean was hushing him and pointing up ahead. “Recognize them?” There were a couple of Gamorreans loitering up ahead, smoking death sticks. Sam recognized the acrid smell. 

Sam rolled his eyes. One Gamorrean looked a hell of a lot like another – big and green and pug-ugly. “Yeah, they’re the guys who are gonna get lung cancer. Or cancer of whatever the hell organ they use to exchange gases. I probably don’t wanna know.”

“Dude, check the most wanted list!”

Annoyed, Sam pulled down his goggles and touched a button on the side. He tabbed through the galaxy’s worst criminals, and was surprised to see images of the two mooks currently skulking around in the alleyway not too far from the top. He stopped for a moment. They were brothers – Gargle and Gurgle, or something like that. Those Gamorrean names were impossible to pronounce if you didn’t have tusks. There was a big one, and an even bigger one. “Huh. You’re right.” Dean had a weird memory for bounties like that.

“Of course I’m right,” Dean whispered. “That one dude’s kind of scrawny.”

“Scrawny?”

Dean shrugged and grinned. “Well, for an enormous pig guy”

Sam eyed the Gamorreans. They didn’t seem to have spotted the Winchesters yet, which was good. But the big guy (well, the _bigger_ guy) was carrying an axe that was at least as large as Sam. “Dean, this is not a good idea. I think we need to wait for reinforcements.”

“What are they wanted for, again?”

Sam scanned through their records. “Well to start off with, they killed the last two – no, _three_ – bounty hunters who went after them!”

Frustratingly enough, the grin only widened. “Hey, sounds like our kinda deal. You wanna pick off the big one?”

Sam peeked out from behind the trash bin once again. This was not on the list of great ideas. “Dean-”

“Opportunity is knocking, and the Force is with us! Besides, you were just whining about how we were broke!”

“I’d rather be broke than pig-splat!”

“C’mon, Sammy! Work with me here. Use a few of your mind tricks, we’ll corral our hogs.” Dean was already getting a pair of binders out, so Sam, despite his better judgment, decided to play along. Trying to hang near the edges of the alley, they crept closer, and then crouched down behind some waste bins. The Gamorreans puffed on their smokes, still completely oblivious.

“Can you get a lock on him?” Dean was whispering. Sam waved at him, trying to clear his mind, trying to concentrate. Quietly as he could, he closed his eyes and reached out to touch the mind of the bigger Gamorrean. It was tough, being out of the line of sight, but he tried to form a mental picture, gritting his teeth in concentration. Fortunately they were alone in the alleyway, so there weren't a lot of other targets.

After a moment of reaching out, seeking the alien mind, he hit pay dirt. And was nearly knocked off his feet for his trouble. Dimly, he felt Dean’s hand on his shoulder, propping him up. Sam had never quite grasped their guttural language, and the creature’s mind was a veritable hive. He forced himself to calm down, and began concentrating on one thought. _I will surrender to these men. I will surrender to these men._ After a moment or two, the Gamorrean’s mind stilled somewhat, and finally, he heard the thought echoed there. _I will surrender to these men._

Sam roused himself from his meditation enough to nod at Dean. Moving quickly now, weapons were cocked, and the Winchesters sprang out of their hiding place to stand before the other set of brothers. 

“Surrender!” said Sam, standing in front of the bigger brother, holding up the Force cuffs. The big guy glanced at Sam, grimaced, flicked away his cigarette butt, and then brought his axe down in the general vicinity of Sam’s head.

Sam ducked just in time, and the axe clanged on the ground. 

Meanwhile, the smaller Gamorrean was holding out his hands in supplication to Dean: “I will surrender to these men,” he murmured.

“Oops, wrong Gamorrean!” Dean cracked, lowering his weapon and reaching for a set of binders.

The little one was the weak-minded one? Well, who’d have thought it! But meanwhile, the big brother had picked up his axe and was swinging at Sam once again. Sam stepped inside the swing and managed to disarm the big pig with a snap to his arm. And then he tried to throw him over one shoulder, but miscalculated and only got halfway. They smashed into some trash containers, and then both ended up on the ground, the Gargle on top of Sam, and the both of them rolling in the garbage.

Sam was being squashed. The Gamorrean reached out, scrabbling for his axe. Sam heard a clang as Dean tried to kick it out of the way, and then Dean hopping around cursing from his stubbed toe. 

“Get him off me!” Sam yelled at his idiot brother. “Get him off!” They were both covered in filth, and Sam could barely breathe from the stink. 

“I’m trying, dude!” Dean yelled back. Now Sam could hear him grunting as Dean was probably trying to catch Gargle's wrists with the binders.

Sam forced himself to calm down and concentrate. Pig anatomy: it wasn’t so different from human anatomy. There was a pressure point, right on the neck. If he could just apply the right amount of Force energy there....

Gargle or whatever his name is suddenly left off wrestling and grabbed his own neck. Cutting off oxygen tended to do that to you. And then both big, green paws slapped at his neck, and Sam was desperately trying to scramble out from under. Gargle reared up, and Sam threw his arms up over his head, waiting to get squashed. Suddenly, he felt himself being seized under his armpits and dragged out from beneath the Gamorrean. And just in time, too, as the pig man collapsed with a crash.

His brother sat nearby on the ground. “I will surrender to these men. I will surrender to these men…” he repeated, over and over. Dean leaned over the unconscious Gamorrean and applied the Force binders. “Good work, Sammy. Though this dude is a little out of it.”

“Oh, yeah, I apologize for making your job too easy,” Sam cracked.

“Aw, that’s OK, but I figure you owe me a beer.” Dean grabbed a pack of smokes from the big Gamorrean's pocket and lit one for himself. He took a step away from Sam. “Yuck, dude. You smell foul.”

“Jerk.”

“Bitch.”

Sam scowled and regarded himself. He brushed a banana peel off his shoulder plate. They attempted to rouse Gargle back to consciousness so they could drag the brothers back to collect their bounty. They didn’t notice the small, hooded figure watching them from further up the alleyway.

 

“He shot first!”

“He did not,” sighed Sam, who leaned back in the booth.

Dean puffed on his smoke. He was going to go through the Gamorrean's whole pack today. “Did so. It’s on the tapes!”

“Tapes can be altered.” Sam scanned around the smoky bar, his hair still wet from the cold shower around back. The bounty they had collected wasn't terrific, but it gave them enough money for a few more days. Or a few less days, if Dean kept blowing through credits on drink and smokes. Sam leaned forward. “We really need to skip town, and soon.”

“Why, Sammy? This place is pretty friendly!” Dean winked over at one of the Twi'lek barmaids. 

“The Gamorreans,” Sam whispered. “Word is they were working as muscle for some local gangsters.”

“They sure as fuck weren't working when we nailed them! They were taking a damn smoke break.”

“Dean, we need to get outta here before they chase us out. Or worse.”

Dean rolled his eyes and took a big bite of his BBQ bantha haunch. “Won't be the first time we've riled up a few natives.”

Still putting on a casual air, Sam cast his eyes around the bar. Every glance now seemed suspicious. “We've got a stash, now let's blow out of town until this dies down.”

“I still need to tune the hyperdrive,” Dean muttered.

Desperately, Sam tried not to let his thoughts drift down the dark path of Force choking his only living relative. “Dean! Tell me you didn't take the hyperdrive apart! Again!” he hissed.

Dean chewed thoughtfully. “It was acting … twitchy.”

“Dean!” 

Maddeningly, Dean grinned and grabbed a beer off the bar maid’s tray, exchanging a glance with the pretty, purple-skinned Twi’lek. She raised one of her head tentacles in a saucy manner, and Sam had to roll his eyes.

“You don’t want another beer?” she asked Sam.

“I’m gonna head in early,” he said, waving her off. She sauntered away. “Tell me you’ll think about … what I said?” he told Dean as he started to edge his large frame out of the booth.

“Sure! And Sammy?”

Sam stopped and fixed his brother with a look.

“Don’t wait up for me.” Dean grinned at the barmaid.

_Dammit._

The fresh, chill night air struck Sam as soon as he strode out of the bar. The night had come quickly, as it tended to do on the planet this time of year, erasing the haze of twilight, and focusing the buildings and streets in a crystal clarity. It was good to be away from the smoke. Refreshing. He stopped, threw his head back, and just breathed in. As he was looking up, a transport flew by overhead, taking people up to one of the big star ships that constantly circled overhead. 

And why was he stuck down here, wrestling pigs and sucking in smoke? There were so many galaxies out there, and Sam was just a speck. He walked down the road, hands jammed deep in his pockets, staring at the ground. This was his life now: instead of great quests, he was literally quite literally wrangling hogs. It wasn't much to look forward to. 

He was so absorbed mulling over his own thoughts and regrets that he didn't notice when that other sense first became aware of the _presence_. It hovered around the edges, like a tickle from something feather-soft. Sam was sometimes aware of other Force-sensitive beings. It usually meant it was time for him get out of there, lest someone discover him and his abilities. So this night, once he became aware of the presence, he quickened his pace. When the feeling only became stronger, he suddenly zigged to the side, taking a more circuitous route to the rooms he and Dean had been renting. 

He walked for a time in silence, but stretching out with his feelings. Whoever was following him must have come right along on the side trip. Sam was now on a nearly deserted street. During the daytime this place was a crowded open marketplace, but now the stalls were all covered in tarps, and the storefronts occluded with metal curtains. 

The presence was behind him, and still apparently keeping pace with him. Without being too obvious about it, Sam reached down and grasped his weapons belt. And then he abruptly turned down a narrow side street. It was only little wider than an alley here, and the upper floors of the buildings on either side were close enough that you could literally reach out and shake hands (or paws, or tentacles, or whatever) with your neighbor across the way. It was shaded during the day, and at night, like now, the tall buildings hid the stars from view. Sam followed the curve of the street, and then he reached the place he was looking for: a sort of temple in the middle of the city. He jogged to the right, down the narrow pathway just outside the temple, then right again, breaking into a light run around the back, until he reached the next corner. 

Ah, this was what he wanted. He hugged the side of the wall surrounding the temple: the Force presence was ahead of him now, probably still out walking on the side street.

This would have been a good time for Sam to backtrack and head home. But since when had a Winchester chosen the wise course? He found that he was curious to at least get a look at whoever or whatever had been tracking him. As the presence seemed to be getting farther away, he proceeded back to the street where, peeking around the corner, he just managed to glimpse a small, hooded figure darting along the street, and rounding a corner. It was the size of a small child, but Sam suspected it was no youngling.

He hurried after the little figure, reaching the corner just as it disappeared, once again, around some shrubbery. That's when he spotted it: a tell-tale green tridactyl foot. Sam rushed to the bushes just as the figure slipped around yet another tight corner.

And so it went, for some minutes, Sam nearly catching up as the being led him further and further into the old neighborhood. Several times he told himself to give up and go home, but each time he would just as certainly get a tantalizing glimpse of a pointed ear poking out of the hood, or a weathered green hand, gripping a cane.

And then, as Sam was only a few feet away, the little creature ducked into a doorway. 

Sam halted outside, gripping his blaster, and glancing nervously back and forth, up and down the narrow street. The door had been left ajar. A trap? He hadn't seen or sensed another being for some time now. Did he dare slip inside to confront his new “friend?” 

What would Dean do?

Sam had to smile to himself. There was absolutely no question in his mind about what his reckless brother would have done. Even though, in his conscious mind, Sam fully realized that he was asking for trouble, he just plain wanted to know. There was a certain amount of danger, of course. There was no telling whether the being might be a Sith Lord, or worse, a Jedi. Many Force-sensitive beings were like Sam, though: untrained. And this was certainly no kind of place for a mighty Sith to hang out!

One thing Sam knew above all else, he could handle himself. So, grasping his weapon, he ducked through the doorway.

It hit him like a blast of cold air: a Force presence that permeated the small room. Sam winced as the door closed behind him with a slam, and then brought up his weapon, knowing full well it would to no good, as a small figure pretty much appeared out of nowhere in the gloom in front of him.

The small hooded figure threw off her hood and stared at him with ancient eyes.

“Coffee … or tea?”

Sam blinked.

“A conversation you would have? Drink, would you like? Better that will make it, yes!” The little tridactyl nodded distractedly to herself, and then shuffled her way over to a small, neat kitchen area. She pointed a single green talon upwards, and a light snapped on. Humming contentedly to herself, she poured water into a kettle, and then set the kettle on a burner on the stove.

“Uh. Tea?” asked Sam. 

“Tea you will? Yes, yes. Calm you down, it will. Have some Orange Pekoe, I do.” She pointed a stubby green finger at a high shelf (well, high for her – it was just above Sam's eye line) and a container labeled tea hopped out and jumped into her hand. 

“Uh, you think I want to talk?”

“A long time have I watched you, Sam Winchester. A long time,” she muttered, as she fussed over a tea pot. “Ambition you have. Yes. And much anger have you.”

“I'm not angry!” Sam snapped.

“Then why the weapon you point, hmmm?” she hummed.

Sam suddenly noticed he was still pointing his gun at her. He holstered his weapon, thinking it would not do him much good in this particular situation anyway. “You lured me in here.”

“Following me? Your choice, it was.”

Sam grumbled, straightened up, and bumped his head on the low-hanging light fixture. “Ow.” He rubbed the back of his head. This was annoying, though at least it didn’t look like the creature wanted to kill him, which was always a plus. “You know me? Who are you?”

“Yocee, call me you may. Be seated, yes, be seated you will.”

Sam peeked down. There was a chair down there, and it was about big enough for a good sized doll, or maybe a small stuffed Wookiee. “Uhh,” said Sam, not wanting to be impolite to a possible Sith Lord, though she hadn’t introduced herself as such. He carefully folded himself into a cross-legged position on the floor beside the tiny chair. “You said you’d been watching me?” Sam asked, cringing as he bumped his knee on the corner of a low table. He leaned forward to rub the knee, and nearly knocked his head on a low-hanging light fixture. “Uh, you’re not from the Sith Academy, are you?”

“A Lord of the Sith? Want that, you do?”

“I just feel like I was made – whoops! – for doing something more,” Sam explained, as his head, once again, nearly bonked into the light fixture. 

Yocee brought a tray containing a tea service from the kitchen area. It had a chubby little teapot, and some tiny cups, not much bigger than a thimble. “Mmm, Sith lords. Very powerful, yes,” she was saying.

“But I’m too old to attend the Sith Academy,” Sam moped as she handed him over a tiny, delicate cup of fragrant tea. Sam took a tiny sip, and emptied the cup. “Uh, you don’t have bigger cups, do you?”

“Old, you say?” asked Yocee. “Old to me you do not look.”

Sam leaned forward. Of course, he totally bonked his forehead on the light fixture, but he didn’t really mind. “You think…. You think there’s a chance?” he whispered. Would a Sith Academy instructor really seek him out? Maybe it was possible. He had heard rumors: there were always stories about the Academy, and the terrible in-fighting. Rivals would literally kill each other to complete the course, or so the story went. The story that John Winchester used to believe, anyway. Of course it was all overblown!

Yocee appeared distracted again. She shuffled over to a cluttered desk and rustled around in one of the drawers for a while. “An assignment there is. Yes. A bounty hunter you are? You and your brother?” She handed it over, and Sam found himself peering at a frayed scrap of parchment. Someone, somewhere, had found an old ink pen and scratched out notes about a bounty hunting job. Sam squinted, scanning over the strange, florid handwriting. There was a rough sketch of the bounty, a man with dark hair and intriguing, wide eyes.

Down at the very bottom of the page, underneath details about the bounty payment (which was substantial), two words: _Darth Abaddon_.

“Isn’t she… She’s- She’s the headmaster, isn’t she?” Sam stuttered. He looked up, and was staring into Yocee’s wise old eyes. Since knowledge was scarce, many rumors swirled around the Academy. Sam had heard the story that there had been some kind of battle for leadership recently: one group was out, another, in. The darkest of the rumors claimed a group of professors was killed in their sleep. Others said there had been a literal siege centered around the school. But spacers and bounty hunters tended to tell wild stories, especially after a few brews.

“Unclear, her status is,” hedged Yocee, her eyes two dark pools in the dimness.

Sam regarded the paper. “If we do this job – me and my brother – do you think it may be my chance?” At the very least, rounding up the miscreant on the wanted poster would give them an excuse to journey to Korriban. Sam couldn’t believe his good luck! There had been nothing reported about this bounty, and it appeared the reward offer was a substantial amount of credits – definitely enough to tempt Dean into the enterprise. Maybe he hadn’t drawn the black feather to life after all?

“Thank you for this!” Sam said, clutching the note. He rose awkwardly to his feet, after knocking his shin and bumping his head yet one more time. 

He emerged to the street, and the door shut softly behind him. Sam stood in the dim early morning light of the narrow street. His communicator rang with a message, so he crumpled the paper into a pocket and took a look. It was a message from Dean. “Boonta,” was all it said.

“Oh, shit!” said Sam, who took off running for their ship.

 

Dean ducked down a side street and scrambled up a fire escape. He lit out across a rooftop, jumped to the next roof, and then slid down a drainpipe into an alleyway.

Almost there.

He had just about made it to the port where their ship was docked. He hoped that his brother had gotten his message, because if not there would be hell to pay.

There it was. He rushed along the corrugated durasteel side on their building and lunged into the hangar. He was relieved to see the ship's ramp was already lowered. Good.

“Sammy!” he hollered as he sprinted up the ramp, into the ship. “The guns, Sammy.”

“Huh?” 

Dean spotted his brother’s silhouette filling a hatchway. “The guns, Sammy! I still gotta fix the hyperdrive!”

Dean skidded across the floor and, tossing his pack aside, grabbed up a couple of hydrospanners and literally leapt into the engine hatch.

“What?” asked Sam.

“Guns, Sammy! They’re coming.” What the bloody hell had possessed him to take the hyperdrive apart? Was he a complete idiot? Well, probably. He slapped on a part, efficiently pinching his knuckle in the process. “God dammit.”

“Oh, shit!” yelled Sam from up above. “Dean, what did you do?”

“Guns!” Dean hollered again. All right, tab A goes into slot B, Dean told himself. Head bone connected to the leg bone. Wait, that wasn’t right. He shook as the ship lurched and gunfire echoed outside. Sammy was either taking off, or someone had hit them bad. Or maybe both.

“What did you do?” Sam hollered again.

“Ya know that waitress?” Dean told him. “Twi'lek? Her brother. Gangster!”

“Aw shit, Dean!” 

“Shut up, bitch!”

“Jerk!”

There was the sound of more laser rifles. Dean tightened some screws. Was that it? Why was he still holding a part in his hand?

He tossed the extra part aside and scrambled out of the maintenance hatch just as the ship lurched again. “We’re outta here!” he yelled, running for the pilot’s seas.

“Dean! Still waiting for the hyperspace coordinates from the navicomputer.” Sam yelled at him from the gun deck.

“Fuck the coordinates,” said Dean. He leapt into his seat, hit a button, and engaged the antigravity. The ship lurched upwards, knocking away some of the chucks that had been holding it steady. Dean leaned on the steering, and the ship suddenly pivoted 180 degrees, reversing and apparently knocking over a couple of the guys who were now inside the hangar, shooting at them. A large group, heavily armed, came into view as the ship came around. 

“Dean, the computer is still-“ Sam was yelling as he ran into the cockpit. 

“Hang on, Sammy!” Dean hollered as he punched it. Sam let out a yelp. The ship accelerated, whisking over the heads of an angry mob and sailing out of the hangar and over the city, keeping close to the tops of the buildings, steering madly around billboards and under the navigation lanes.

“Dammit Dean,” yelled Sam as he assembled himself in the copilot’s seat.

“Are they chasing us?” asked Dean as he wove around a freighter.

“Of course they’re chasing us!”

“How many?”

“A lot.”

“How many specifically.”

“A whole fucking lot.”

“Not helpful, Sammy!”

“Screwing around with Twi’lek gangsters is not helpful, Dean.”

Dean glanced at his brother. “She wasn’t a gangster. It was her brother. Is the fucking computer ready yet?”

“In a minute.”

The ship rocked as one of the pursuing speeders obviously got within shooting distance.

“Tell it to hurry the fuck up or there’s no more ship!” The ship rocked again. Dean huffed. “All right, throw all the shielding into the front.”

“You mean the back?”

“I said the front!” Sam threw a disgusted glance at his brother, and then complied.

“Get belted the fuck in!” Dean yelled. He heard a snap, and then he jerked the control stick, and the ship flipped backwards, sailing right towards their now confused pursuers, who were all scrambling to get out of the way. The ship rocked as one of the dishes caught on another ship that got too close, and then Dean pulled back and the ship was heading skyward. 

“Coordinates locked!” Sam shouted. “Punch it!”

And then the sky filled with stars.


	3. Chapter 3

Dean lay back on the couch, relaxing with a drink. “Ace flying today, huh, Sammy?” he inquired when his little brother made an appearance. Sam, sadly, did not concur, but rather made a big show of rolling his eyes. The kid pulled a scrap of paper out of a pocket and stared at it.

“So, where are we headed?” Dean asked. “Did you just program the computer for random 'get me the fuck outta here?'”

Sam’s expression suddenly morphed from ruffled to snotty. “I got us a job.”

“What?”

Sam held out the crumpled paper. Dean grabbed it and gave it the once over. “Nice. Needs a shave and a haircut,” he commented of the sketch. His eyes narrowed as he scanned to the bottom. “Darth somebody? Ah crap, not more Imperials? You know how I hate working for those assholes!”

“Not directly. The bounty is being offered by the Hutts, under the aegis of Darth Abaddon.”

“Aegis? What the hell is an aegis, and why would you wanna get under one?”

The snotty look hadn’t left Sam’s face. He stood in the doorway, his arms crossed. “I programmed the navicomputer to take us to Tatooine.”

Dean's eyes grew big. “Oh, not that piece of shit little sandbox. The Hutts are almost as bad as the Imperials. They're gangsters! Duh!”

“Dean, take a look at the reward.”

Dean scanned the page again, and did a double take. He frowned, and then counted the zeroes. 

Well, damn! That was a lot of zeroes.

Sam pushed Dean’s legs away and sat down on the couch next to his brother. “Look, that's a lot of money. Even at the rate you spend it, it would keep us for months.”

“Hey, I don't waste money,” Dean retorted, although he found himself coming around on this. That was a fuckload of zeroes.

“And even if we don't take the job, we'll be on the Outer Rim, where we can cool it for a while. It’ll give your ‘new friends’ on Andara time to calm down.”

Dean held up the parchment. “That a lot of zeroes, Sammy.

“It's a lot of zeroes, Dean.”

“What's the catch?”

Sam stood up and smiled, shrugging his shoulders. “There is no catch.”

“There's _always_ a catch, little brother.”

 

There was a catch.

As it turned out, Zachariah the Hutt was rather insufferable even for a member of his repulsive breed. Dean stood in the main hall of his subterranean palace, cursing under his breath and scratching where sand had seeped under his armor plating, while Sam listened dutifully to Zach's translator, a weaselly little Ugnaught named Metatron. The translator – who was for some reason garbed in ermine on a desert planet – gesticulated at the blank space on the wall above the dais and whined on and on about the innumerable indignities his Magnificent Hutt-iness had suffered at the hands of the vile Trickster, and the many and horrendous punishments and tortures he would inflict upon the same when he was inevitably caught.

“Yes, his favorite decoration,” said Sam, nodding with a forced sincerity that seemed to go over the heads of the various parties: it was not just Zachariah snorting and drooling and listening in, but various and sundry members of his posse. Hutts tended to collect hangers-on like they did gold coins. This just added to Dean's annoyance, as he brushed off a couple of little hooded creatures with glowing eyes that got too close to the blaster rifle slung over his back.

But Zach’s translator droned on as Zachariah drooled. “His Imperial Master, Great Zachariah, will be presiding at the Trials in the Grand Arena a fortnight hence!”

“Is a fortnight bigger than a real night?” Dean whispered to Sam, who shushed him.

“It is critical that the Jedi scum of the earth is returned to the great and powerful master before that time,” said Metatron, “so that the vile Jedi may be punished for his many crimes, past, present and future, against humanity!”

“They’re punishing him for future crimes?” Dean hissed. Sam had to shrug at this one. Zach was obviously pretty wound up. “How’s he gonna commit future crimes if he’s frozen in fucking carbonite?”

 

“So, what do you think?” asked Sam.

“It's a Jedi, Sammy,” growled Dean when, at long last, they once again stepped into the stark light of Tatooine's twin suns.

“It's a Jedi in _carbonite_ , Dean.”

“Same difference.” Dean grabbed one of his knives from his utility belt and inserted it between an armor plate and his skin and tried to scratch, using the flat of the blade. “Ahhhh!” 

“We just grab the whole carbonite block and bring it back to Zachariah, and we’re done.”

“Yeah, but I'm sure the dude can still do creepy Jedi stuff, even inside the block. Those dudes don’t give up! And I really don't wanna be hit with mind tricks. And by the way, is this job for the Jedi-sicle, or for the Trickster dude? Seems like Zach had it in for Tricky more than the Jedi.” The came up beside where Dean had parked the speeder, and Dean had to shoo more of the annoying little hooded figures away. They sqeaked in protest. “Hope this didn't get sand in the motivator,” he sighed as rubbed a speck of dust from the hood with his sleeve.

“Look Dean, this Trickster guy is supposed to be based nearby. Let's at least go check that out.”

Dean waved a hand. “Why would any smuggler worth his salt be hanging out on a piece of shit Outer Rim planet like this?”

Sam gazed up at one of the vast sand dunes that surrounded Zachariah's dwelling. There was a great skull lying half uncovered atop the dune. “Krayt dragon pearls, for one thing,” he mused. The dragons were native to Tatooine, and one of the very few sources of riches in this desolate place (as repeated attempts at mining here had failed to pan out). The fierce, long-lived Krayts were the source of dragon pearls, rocks that had been worn away by centuries of grinding over and over and over in the beasts’ gizzards. The resulting stones were prized by collectors as things of rare beauty, but also of interest to the Force-sensitive, as they proved useful in tuning the beams in lightsabers. 

“Nothing ever happens on Tatooine. Nothing!” Dean was saying.

Sam sighed. “They say the Trickster owns a bar, Dean. Beer? Ale? Whiskey?”

Dean yanked the door of the speeder open, and a line of dust trickled out. “Sand! I fucking hate sand!” he groused. 

“Twi'lek bar maids?” Sam added.

Dean met his brother's gaze, not certain whether Sam was joking. “OK, as long as we're here. But we gotta come up with a decent cover story. I doubt a smuggler who goes by The Trickster is gonna cotton to a couple of off world hunters.” 

Sam climbed in and Dean punched the accelerator. He gazed out the door at the monstrous Krayt skeleton half-buried on top of the dune. The spinal column came into view as they crested the dune, stretching on and on. 

“Dean, I have an idea. A cover story!” said Sam.

 

Mos Anek was not one of the larger port cities, so it didn't take long to get a lead on the guy they were looking for. The brothers doffed their usual armor – a welcome change in the desert heat – and dispensed with most of their more visible weaponry in order to blend in with the mix of moisture farmers and spacers who hung out here. After a few local inquiries, they were soon directed to a jewelry store located on one of the side streets. They pulled up outside just as two Tuskens sauntered out of the shop and, after casting some annoyed metal eye sockets towards the brothers, mounted their bantha and rode off.

Dean held his nose. He wasn't quite sure what stank worse – the raiders or their furry mount. He swore under his breath, brushed off more sand, and hoped to be off this godforsaken rock as quickly as possible. 

The front door chime jangled as they entered a small room. The walls were lined with shelves jammed with rack upon rack of dusty, cheap costume jewelry. 

“What will it be today, gentlemen?” asked the small human who emerged from the back room. Dean frowned. Sam had flashed his “be careful” signal, but the dude didn't appear to be wearing any weaponry. That was a bit unexpected for a merchant running a jewelry store, but this stuff looked like junk as far as Dean could tell – definitely not worth the effort to rob him.

“We're looking for something a little … unusual,” Sam hinted.

“Ah! A trinket for the sweetheart, back on your home planet?” babbled the clerk, immediately bustling over to the rack with some junky rings.

“Something local,” pressed Dean.

The clerk pulled out a drawer, and then made a big deal out of pushing it closed again. “Rings not your style? Now, I don't get that sense from you. How about-?”

“Dragon pearls?” said Sam.

The clerk leaned back on a counter and cocked an eyebrow. “Ah, a rare taste! And here, I'm just a simple merchant.”

Sam nodded to Dean, who went to the front door and checked around. There was no one on the street. Sam took off his pack and rummaged around inside. He extracted a shiny, cylindrical hilt and held it up.

The clerk's light brown eyes shifted back and forth between Sam and Dean. At length, he held out a hand. “May I?”

Sam nodded and handed it over. The clerk took the hilt in hand and tapped a switch.

The lightsaber ignited with a warm hum. The blade was white, and cast a dim glow in the dark shop. 

The clerk gave it a couple of passes, and then, swiftly and with remarkable skill, turned and struck the blade through one of the counters. There was a fizzle, and after a pause, half the counter fell away with a crash.

The clerk blithely ignored the damage. “Nice balance,” said he, clicking it off and handing it back to a somewhat flustered Sam. Dean only looked smug. “Funny, neither of you boys gives off the aroma of Eau du Jedi.”

“You’re sayin’ we don’t smell right? Maybe the Tuskens covered it up,” Dean cracked.

“Wouldn't insult the sand people, especially around here.” But the clerk was rubbing his chin. “Usually, Krayt pearls cost a pretty penny. I sometimes organize dragon hunts. If you’re the adventurous sort?”

Dean cracked a grin. “Naw, we’re more shy and retiring.”

The clerk was still eyeing the saber. “You suppose there's more where this baby came from?”

“We could suppose something like that,” said Sam.

The clerk waggled his eyebrows. He went to the front door and turned around his OPEN sign so it read CLOSED, and then, with the push of a button, brought down a metal grate over the front of the shop. Then he pushed one of the counters aside to reveal a hidden hatch in the floor. He pulled open the hatch and inclined his head. “Gentlemen, welcome to my parlor.”

Sam and Dean exchanged a glance, and, while the clerk held the trap door up, headed down the narrow wooden staircase into a dimly lit basement room.

“So, what do we have here?” asked the same clerk, who was now waiting at the bottom of the stairs. Sam and Dean, confused, looked back up the staircase. The clerk hit a switch, and a light suddenly illuminated the dim downstairs room. 

The basement was a hell of a lot bigger than the shop overhead. And they were surrounded by cases containing dragon pearls of all shapes and sizes. Dean recovered quickly, and moved to a case that contained some samples small enough to be used in a lightsaber.

Sam, who was still holding the lightsaber hilt, looked around, unable to contain his surprise. “They call me the Trickster, by the way,” the clerk told him. He reached out a hand. “But I also go by Loki.”

“Sam.” Sam held out his hand to shake. “And this is Dean.” 

“As it happens, I gotta get out of town soon for a short trip,” Loki told them. “Just a little errand – gotta make a delivery. But I'll be back soon. You suppose you two might happen into more lightsabers by the time I get back?”

“That could be arranged,” said Dean, who was now crouching beside a case, scrutinizing the pearls. 

“You're leaving soon?” asked Sam.

“Soon-ish,” hemmed Loki. He moved over to the case that had intrigued Dean and crouched down opposite of him. “Have a color preference?”

“Purple.”

Loki rolled his eyes. “Why is it always purple? You know that's a rare one.”

“As you said, I got rare taste.”

“We could get our hands on some stuff pretty quickly,” Sam interjected.

“I'll be back in a couple days,” said Loki. “Meantime, they know me at the cantina up the street. If you're looking for rooms, say my name, and they'll take care of you.”

Sam nodded. It was pretty clear they were being ushered out, so he followed Dean back up the stairs where, to the surprise of no one, Loki was already awaiting them. 

“Nice trick,” said Dean.

“Thus my nickname,” said Loki with a grin. 

He cranked up the mesh curtain, and the brothers exited the shop. And then the curtain fell, and they were left alone on a dusty backstreet as the twin suns set low in the sky.

“Damn,” whispered Sam after they were out of earshot. “We gotta find out where he's hiding the Jedi before he takes off.”

“Or,” said Dean, “we could let this one go, and just trade some sabers for pearls.” Configuring a lightsaber was not a trivial business, and was widely rumored to be one of the final tests of a Jedi Knight’s training. For some weird reason, however, Dean, who had always been mechanically inclined, was adept at building them. Sam could handle one, after a fashion, though it was not his preferred weapon as they proved very tricky for those who had not received specialized training. Thus, they had ended up mostly selling and bartering Dean’s creations to Force-sensitive individuals. 

As for sabers with dragon pearls to refine the focus? Dean’s mind was already a few steps ahead, calculating how much of the revenue could be put back into investments such as ale and dancing girls.

“Dean, remember the zeroes!” said Sam.

“Why are you so obsessed with this Jedi dude?” Dean snapped back, as he still had dragon pearls dancing in his eyes. “Look, if Loki really is the one who stole the frosty, refreshing Jedi-sicle from Zach, maybe he had his reasons?”

“What reasons would that be?”

“I don’t care, as long as it keeps me away from Jedi business.” Dean pulled the speeder in front of the cantina. Like most of Tatooine’s above-ground architecture, it was a low, dome-shaped building, and roughly the same color as the planet’s endless dunes. 

Dean began to open his door, but Sam hesitated. “Dean, about Loki….”

“Yeah, what about him?”

“Just when he first came out? I got a sense from him. I think he’s Force-sensitive.”

Dean shrugged. “He traffics in black market sabers and dragon pearls, probably makes sense.”

“But I mean, really Force sensitive. And then it went away.”

“Probably covered up by the sand person stench. Anyway, let’s go get a drink!” Dean hopped out and made for the cantina, Sam trailing after him. The bar was about what he had expected for a space port on Tatooine: dark and grimy and filled with shady characters. In other words, his very favorite abode. A couple of Twi’lek dancers shimmied around some poles, while a guy who looked like they’d built the place around him held court at the bar. 

“I’ll get us a booth,” Sam muttered as Dean elbowed up towards the bar. Dean let him go: his brother got moody sometimes, and Dean decided just to go with the flow. Maybe it was that whole Force thing, messing him up? 

While Dean was waiting for his drinks, he listened in while a couple of Rodians standing nearby bickered in their annoying native language. Both were outfitted as bounty hunters, so Dean guessed they were quarreling over a bounty. A dude wearing a brown robe wandered in and proceeded up to the bar. Not anything out of the ordinary there, except he had this funny sort of serene attitude Dean had picked up on once or twice before. Trying not to look like he was paying attention, he leaned against the bar and listened. 

The dude pushed back his hood. He appeared fairly unremarkable, with lots of messy dark hair and sincere eyes. “Pardon me, friend,” he said to the bartender. “I’ve come here looking for an acquaintance of mine, and wondered if you’d heard of him?”

The barkeep, a crusty old human, glared at the interloper. “We mind our business here.”

The hooded man maintained his genial smile. “He’s a merchant, like me. A man of some means.” As if to emphasize this point, he tossed some nova crystals on the bar. He flashed a money pouch under his robe. It looked quite fat. 

The barkeep cast a hungry eye at the credits. “I’m listening,” he said. Dean leaned closer, the crystals shining in his eyes.

“His name is Castiel.”

“Castiel?” Dean interjected, and the hooded man flicked his eyes over to him.

The barkeep looked about ready to reply, but at that moment, the Rodians' quarrel evidently heated up, and one of them – a green-skinned one – knocked into Dean.

“Out of my way!” the Rodian snapped at Dean, who held his hands up and tried to appear calm, meanwhile cursing that he’d left the majority of his weaponry out in the speeder. 

“My bad,” said Dean, with a perfect, insincere smile.

“You should be careful!” the green Rodian snapped.

“Come, have a drink with us,” said the robed man, who was now standing next to Dean, still smiling serenely. “Let me buy you something, friend.”

“Your friend is scum!” the Rodian told the robed man, who glanced inquisitively at Dean.

“I haven’t really met this man before, but he seems an honorable sort,” the robed man said. Dean tried not to snort.

The grey Rodian, who green Rodian had just been arguing with, suddenly hissed, “Castiel! Jedi scum!” He brought up his weapon, a rather outsized blaster (or at least that was Dean’s opinion of it – the two looked like amateurs).

“Hey, I don’t want any trouble,” said Dean, who was mentally counting out the seconds to grab his weapon, and wondering where the hell Sammy had gotten to.

“No blasters!” pleaded the barkeep.

Suddenly, grey Rodian pointed the blaster towards Dean’s heart, his finger on the trigger. But before Dean could even reach for his weapon, there was a flash and a hum, and the Rodian’s blaster lay on the floor. Along with the Rodian’s hand. And a fair splash of blood.

The wounded Rodian’s friend grabbed him and, pausing a moment to also grab the blaster (but leaving the detatched hand) hustled him out of a back door. 

The other patrons, who had quieted down for a moment to watch, all went back to their drinks as the hooded man silently powered down his lightsaber and replaced it on his belt.

“Clean up,” grumbled the bartender, who beckoned for one of his servants. He pushed some drinks onto the counter. “This rounds’s on me, boys. But don’t spread it around,” he told Dean and the hooded man in a hushed voice.

Dean looked the robed guy up and down. “Dean,” he said, holding out a hand.

The mild smile remained. “Inias.” They shook.

“I may have a lead on your … friend,” Dean told him. They picked up the drinks, and proceeded back to the booth where Sam was apparently deep in conversation with a pretty, dark-haired waitress.

Sam looked up with a guilty expression when they neared. “Oh. Uh. Guys. This is, uh, Kathy.”

“Kristy,” she corrected, smiling sweetly. 

Dean glared at her. 

“Uh, yeah, and she was just _going_ ,” said Sam.

Kristy smiled, and flitted off. “Sam, this is Inias,” said Dean, sliding into the booth opposite Sam. “He just saved me from being blasted. You know, while you were chatting up a waitress?”

Sam managed a sort of smile. “Oh! Hello, Inias.”

“He may know about our Jedi-sicle,” whispered Dean, as both Inias and Sam gave him strange looks.

“He’s not-“ Inias ventured.

Dean cut him off with a stare. “Don’t even, kid. We know Cas ain’t a merchant, and your lizard friends knew it too.”

Inias cocked an eyebrow, and then settled back with his drink, apparently unruffled. Anybody who could handle a lightsaber like that, Dean reflected, could probably get by being unruffled. “Since you appear to know so much about me, let me conjecture about you. Bounty hunters, I’d say?”

“Yeah, yeah, scum of the earth,” said Dean.

“You provide a service for pay,” Inias hedged. “Fortunately, I am in a position to provide an appropriate payment as well. May I ask why you have an interest in my friend?”

Dean nodded at Sam, who shook his head. There followed a short round of wordless interchange between the brothers, while Inias watched with growing amusement. Finally, Sam pulled a crumpled piece of paper from a pocket and slid it across the table. Inias scanned it, his face taking on a slight frown as his eyes got to the bottom.

“Abaddon,” he murmured.

“You know the name?” asked Dean.

“She is rumored to be the new headmaster of the Sith Academy,” Inias told him. He glanced at the brothers. “Although it’s not obvious, it is also thought to be the seat of some considerable power among that hierarchy.”

Dean tapped the paper. “Why are so many people fighting over this guy? And how did he end up on this rock?”

Inias rubbed his chin. “I can answer the second part. Castiel abruptly took leave, without going through the usual channels, nor did he inform anyone of his intentions.”

“So he’s AWOL?” asked Dean.

“You could consider him so.” Inias’s frown deepened. “His last known transmission came from this area, so it seemed a logical place to begin looking. I am a friend of his, and I’ve undertaken this search with the endorsement of my … employers. It is feared that he is in considerable danger.” He looked back and forth between Sam and Dean. “What have you found out? Have you had a chance to contact this Zachariah the Hutt? Was he forthcoming?”

“Oh, he was totally forthcoming,” Dean grumbled, working a finger in his ear at the memory. “And then some.”

“Somehow, your friend got himself encased in carbonite,” Sam told him. 

“Zach was using him to decorate his main hallway, until the whole kit and caboodle got snatched by this guy who goes by The Trickster.”

“He runs a jewelry shop on the outskirts,” said Sam.

“I guess he also goes by Loki.”

“That name sounds … familiar,” said Inias. He stared at his drink for a moment, as if trying to recall something.

“But we gotta hurry, sounds like,” Dean cut in. “We just came from there, and it sounds like he's planning on skipping town.”

Inias smiled. “Loki? I just came from the spaceport. I believe I have identified his ship.”

“It would be good if we could case it,” said Dean.

“It won't be easy,” said Sam. “I think this guy knows some mind tricks.”

“I may know a few of my own,” Inias told them. “I will leave now to scout around the port. I know we haven't had time to discuss terms, but I could make it worth your while if you'd care to assist me.”

“We're in,” said Dean, to a scowl from Sam. 

And then Inias was off. It was kind of like he was here one minute, and then gone the next. “Whoa.”

Sam was leaning forward, nearly glowering. “Dean, what the hell? First you wanna steer clear of Jedi business, now you're roping us in with a Jedi? Who the fuck is this character, anyway?”

Dean glared back. “And who's Kristy or Kathy or whoever?”

“She seemed nice,” Sam grumbled.

It was Dean's turn to lean across the table, so he took it. “Whoever the dude is, he's loaded. And I've never seen anybody handle a lightsaber like that.”

“So now you wanna help rescue the him? He’s a Jedi, Dean.”

“Hey, all this has made got me curious. If there's that many people after him, maybe this Castiel is a guy I wanna know.”

“Or major bad news.”

“Could be. But that makes it fun. Finish your drink, and we'll take off.” Dean found himself grinning as his brother pitched yet another sour face. He'd thought Tatooine would be a drag, but this could at least be amusing. And maybe if they did a good job for this Jedi dude, he'd put in a good word for them with headquarters? 

Or maybe he could work it so they got paid off by both sides. 

At any rate, this was going to be _awesome_.

 

Dean had parked the speeder a good distance from the port area. The cold night air cut like a knife. Sam stood shivering in the desert wind. The arid night came on chill and pitiless.

They picked their way through the discarded flotsam and jetsam of Mos Anek as they made their way closer to the port, Dean in the lead, Sam, sulking, behind him. Why was Dean suddenly so obsessed with helping this Jedi? Sam wondered. And keeping company with another Jedi to boot! If Darth Abaddon caught wind of this....

But Sam couldn't tell Dean about that twist. Or rather, he _wouldn't_ tell Dean. He told himself that he didn't want to get his own hopes up. After all, by most reckonings, he was far too old to apply to the Sith Academy. But there were also rumors – wild ones, it was true – that they would consider most anyone, free man or slave, if he showed potential. It could be his ticket out of this small time existence, and into the larger world he had always dreamed of.

Somehow, Inias was now standing at Dean's side. Sam was unnerved by it, as he was also suspicious of the Jedi. 

Inias beckoned them over to the lip of a medium sized hangar. Like most things on Tatooine, it was mostly located underground. The spaceship hangars were basically a set of giant depressions carved into the ground, and all connected by a complex network of tunnels. 

After checking around for anyone watching, the three men crouched down and peered into the hole, where an older model starship was parked. Inias pointed to the strange image painted on the tail section. 

“Is that supposed to be … a horse?” Sam asked. He had never seen a real one, of course, but had seen images of them. But something was wrong. 

“I thought they only had four legs,” said Dean, as he counted at least eight.

“It's a mythical horse,” said Inias. “And I believe this to be Loki's ship.” 

“Have you tried to get onboard yet?” Dean asked.

Inias nodded. “That's where I'm going to need assistance. Whoever Loki really is, he's taken the trouble to install locks that aren't vulnerable to my powers.”

“Force-proof,” chuckled Dead, and even Sam had to grin at that. “Yeah, but they're easy enough to pick. You gotta go old school!”

Inias looked unhappy. “I'm afraid I have no aptitude for that.”

“No problem. I'll pop the locks, you guys act as lookout.” Dean carefully got to his feet and checked around. “OK. Sammy, you stay up here, it'll give you a good view.”

“I'm not sure, Dean,” said Sam. He wasn't. He had a bad feeling about this entire enterprise, and wanted to stay close to his brother.

“I'll be fine. And Mr. Invisible Jedi Guy can snoop around outside. Sound good, Inias?” The Jedi nodded. “Maybe you can teleport us down there!”

Inias actually cracked a small smile. “If only we were capable of such things! I wouldn't have to maintain my speeder. But we can make ourselves so we tend to escape notice.”

“I swear that Loki dude can zap from place to place,” Dean said. “All right, let's go. Usual signals, Sammy.”

Inias put a hand on Dean's shoulder, and before Sam could object, there weren't standing there any more. Cursing to himself, he knelt down on the lip of the hangar, taking out his signaling device. He waited with growing impatience for Dean and that Jedi to come into view down below. 

The flick came out of the corner of his eye. He turned and saw Inias, off in a dark corner, and holding Dean's signal light. Sam flashed his own device once in reply. Sam strained his eyes against the dark of the hangar, but thought he glimpsed a small motion over where Dean must be trying to pick the locks on the cargo hold. Sam wondered what the hell his brother was up to, and then he remembered: the kidnapped Jedi was supposedly frozen in carbonite, so he was probably being treated as cargo. If Loki was any kind of smuggler, he'd have secret spaces all over the ship for contraband. 

And then Sam saw something that sent a chill through his blood: a speeder cruised up, and Loki himself popped out. He ambled over to one of the stairwells and disappeared inside. Sam leaned over to signal Inias, but couldn't believe what he saw: Loki's ship had suddenly come alive! The running lights were on, and he could hear the engine purr. Sam had never seen anything like it. Did Loki have some kind of remote control on his starship? Or could he actually teleport, despite what Inias had claimed?

Sam quickly flashed the danger signal. Inias briefly came into view when he signaled back. And then Loki appeared down in the hangar, emerging from the stairwell. Wait! So he wasn't on the ship yet – then who was getting her prepared to launch?

Some empty containers, which were stacked over in the opposite corner of the hangar, suddenly tumbled over, creating a great racket. Sam suspected Inias had given them a Force push to distract Loki. Sure enough, Loki walked over and stood examining the crates for a moment.

The great engines of Loki's starship began to thrum. Dammit, he was getting ready to launch. How was he doing this? And was Dean still inside the cargo hold? Sam hadn’t seen him come out.

Loki grabbed something off his belt. It looked like a communicator. There was a squeak and a pop as a hatch in the side of the ship sprang open, and Loki leapt inside. And then it slammed shut and, as if in one motion, the ship was airborne, rising up over the crest of the hangar, suspended there in air, engines idling.

 

Sam closed his eyes and frantically reached out with his Force senses. Dean was still on that ship – he could definitely sense his presence!

The engines engaged. Desperate now, feeling his brother and their bounty being ripped away to who knows where, Sam reached out and with everything he had, and _pulled_.

The ship began to accelerate away, but suddenly lurched to a halt, the engines squealing. 

Sam sank to his knees, reaching both arms out now, concentrating, pulling the ship back.

The engines whined. There were sparks, and smoke. The pilot was not going to give up. The ship lurched again, and Sam fought back. He was shaking now. Blood began to trickle from his nose, his ears. 

The ship began to vibrate. Just a little more power. Sam needed just a little more power. His brother. His bounty. They wouldn't take him. His body filled with fear and rage. 

A hand on his shoulder. “Sam! Let go!” Inias clasped both shoulders and shook. “Sam! Listen to me! You'll both be killed. Let go!”

There was a roar as the connection suddenly shattered. Sam gasped and sank to the ground as Loki's ship thundered away.

 

Dean knew something was up.

Probably the ship – ha!

He'd broken into the cargo hold pretty easily, but of course there wasn't anything good in there. Well, there were some interesting contraband items – like the licorice. Yum! But he couldn't think about that just then. So he'd gone ahead and broken into the hold within the hold, but that was still a washout, and then finally the secret compartment in that hold within the hold. Loki was good, but Dean was better. 

That's when Inias had started to message him about Loki. Dean figured he had time, at least at first, since an older ship like this usually took a few moments to warm up. So he'd stuffed the communicator in a pocket and turned his attention to unfastening the lid of this wooden coffin that had been plastered with a bunch of “CAUTION – PLAGUE” stickers. It's possible it really _was_ a plague victim, but Dean had his money on Iced Jedi Surprise. 

He'd gotten a half dozen of the rivets popped, with another half dozen to go, when the whole ship had lurched. His light source also popped out of his hand, which meant he was now in total darkness. 

OK, this was probably sub-optimal, but dammit, he'd come this far, he wanted his damn Jedi. Or gruesome plague victim, whichever it turned out to be. The crate was heavy as hell, so he was betting on the former. 

He still had the hydrospanner in his hand, so he went around, maneuvering inside the cramped, dark space, until he had the last rivet popped. And then, weight on his knees and bracing against one side of the hold, he had managed to slide off the lid. So far, so good. Now, what was inside? He stuck an arm over the lid, but couldn't reach down far enough to touch it. So he slid up against the side, leaning over further and further into the coffin, reaching into the darkness.

Of course, that's when the ship lurched again, and Dean overbalanced and dropped right inside the crate. He landed against something cool and smooth. It sure as hell wasn't a body. And even better, he felt something under his arm. It was his light source. He clicked it on, and ended up face to face with the frozen metal sculpture of a startled, wide-eyed Jedi.

Yahtzee!

All right, now what to do? Dean had to figure they'd already taken off, but he doubted they were in hyperspace yet. They were probably cruising around the planet in a holding pattern. Oh, and Sammy was probably royally pissed off. Well, it didn't matter, they had this bounty in the bag. Or rather in the crate.

The solution seemed obvious: Dean would just reheat this guy, explain the story, and then they'd go all Jedi on Loki, turn the ship around and get back to the planet. He figured even a sleepy Jedi would probably out-fight Loki, even though that dude was pretty slippery. He still wondered how the hell the guy had managed to get this old ship running remotely. Maybe he had a droid? But you usually didn't trust astromechs with piloting. Well, something for later. 

Still lying on top of the frozen Jedi, he felt around for the controls that kept him in hibernation. He pushed a couple of buttons, and the carbonite panel began to hum and glow. Dean got up on his hands and knees and was going to maneuver himself back out of the crate, but that's when Loki evidently decided to make another sharp turn. Damn, that guy was like the worst star pilot in the galaxy! Dean crashed back down on the rapidly thawing Jedi dude just as his face emerged from its carbonite prison. He blinked.

Wow, his eyes were really blue. Dean had a good view, as he was only inches away.

“Hey, dude! Castiel? Wake up! You've been kidnapped.”

The dude glared. 

“Hey! Lord Jedi! Castiel! I'm Dean Winchester, and I'm here to rescue you!” Dean explained, hoping the guy could hear. He knew it took a few hours for vision to come back what with hibernation sickness, but he thought your hearing bounced back right away. Or was it the other way around? Anyway, he figured he'd explain, and then they'd sneak out of the cargo hold....

A hand came up. The guy's right hand had just defrosted. It thrust out.

And smack! Dean was thrown up against the ceiling of the small hold. He ended up crashing right on through it, and coming to a landing, seeing stars, in what looked like the main cabin of the ship.

Uh-oh!

Dean collected his wits in time to glance over and see the Jedi crawling out of the hold after him. He was wearing just a pair of pajama pants, pale and shivering and obviously half blind, and still somehow radiating an immense amount of power. “Look, dude-” Dean began.

A hand came up, and Dean found himself now thrown up against the wall by the same invisible power. “Hey, stop, I'm trying to rescue you.”

“Castiel!” came a voice. Dean struggled to turn his head and saw Loki had discovered them. “What the hell?”

Castiel pivoted. Dean was released, and now Loki was the one slammed against a wall. “Gabriel!” hissed Castiel.

“No, it's Loki!”

“You're Gabriel!” Castiel insisted, stepping forward. 

OK, so the Trickster was actually Loki who was actually Gabriel? Dean rubbed his head – he was getting confused.

“Cas! Cas,” Loki pleaded, wriggling against Cas’s hold on him. “You gotta stop. We're in flight!”

“What did you do to me?” Cas demanded, his voice rough and low and dangerous.

The ship jerked, Loki choked, but Cas somehow balanced like a cat, his hand thrust forward, channeling Force power to use against Loki.

“What the hell is going on?” demanded a new voice. It was Loki. No, it was _another Loki_ , poking his head in the room. “Cas?”

“Wait. There's two of you?” asked Dean, looking between them.

“What the hell are _you_ doing here?” asked this new Loki.

“Loki!” yelled Cas. But evidently he didn't have enough juice to throw this new guy around as well.

“Cas, cut it out. We're in space! You'll crash the ship. Castiel! Please!”

Castiel cast blind eyes towards the one he had addressed as Loki. And then, suddenly, he lowered his hand. All of the power that had radiated around him seemed to melt away, and he sank down towards the deck, shivering. “I can't see,” he whispered.

“You have hibernation sickness, dummy!” said Loki. “I'll go get a blanket.” He ducked out of the cabin.

“Get him a drink, too!” yelled the man Castiel had called Gabriel. He ran over to Cas, putting an arm over his shoulder. “Come on, old bean.” Cas pushed him away, but after another try, let Gabriel lead him over to a couch.

“You guys know each other?” Dean asked.

“We're brothers. Duh! Not that it's any of your business, bounty hunter guy.”

“Wait! You kidnapped your own brother? Why?”

“We had to haul him back to Iego in time for his wedding,” said Loki, who came back with a blanket and a flask. He and Gabriel wrapped the blanket around Castiel. “Get you to the church on time!”

“Oh no!” rasped Castiel. “Not that Corellian woman!”

“The family needs the alliance,” Gabriel told him.

“And we had to come up with a virgin – but fast!” added Loki.

“And you know how that is in our family,” said Gabriel. “Short supply!”

“I thought Jedi weren't supposed to get married,” said Dean.

“We're not!” barked Castiel.

“Thus the kidnapping,” said Loki, who was grinning.

“But we didn't think you'd drag your boyfriend into this!” said Gabriel.

“I've never met this man,” said Castiel, casting a hand towards Dean. Dean flinched, but fortunately, this time the Jedi was just waving at him, and not slamming him against the wall.

“Introductions! Bounty hunter guy, this is my bro, Castiel,” said Loki. “He enjoys long walks, and swinging around a cool light up sword.

“And Castiel, this is the bounty hunter guy,” said Gabriel. “Wait until you get a look at him!” He waggled his eyebrows. “He enjoys hunting bounty, pretending he's not a bounty hunter, sneaking aboard ships where he's not wanted-”

“And women!” said Dean.

“Then why were you checking out my bro's butt?”

“I wasn't!” Dean looked over at the shivering Jedi. “Well, maybe a little.” Dean had to admit, even just defrosted like this, the Jedi was awfully easy on the eyes. Despite his tendency to toss people into walls, that is. Or maybe because of it?

“Aha! A match made in heaven.”

“We now pronounce you, Jedi and bounty hunter!”

“You may now de-virginize the Jedi,” Loki told Dean. “We won't watch. Much. But we will get it on video.”

“Will you two please refrain from making off-color remarks,” Castiel sighed, taking a sip from the flask. 

“But I thought you guys were hauling Cas home to his wedding?” Dean asked.

“Eh, they were paying us.”

“But it would be nice to see our baby bro off with someone nice.”

“At least nicer than that Corellian.” Both Loki's shook their heads and muttered, “Ewwww!”

“She's kind of a twit.” 

“So, why is Abaddon after you?” Dean looked up to see three pairs of eyes were now glaring at him. 

“You're working for that Sith sleaze?” asked Loki. “All right, the engagement is off!”

Dean held his hands up. “Look, I'll admit, that's what first got us on this case.” He dug into a pocket and extracted the now very crumpled piece of paper that contained the bounty notice, handing it over to one of the Lokis. “I don't like taking jobs from the Imperials. But my brother insisted: he's been sort of a pain about this. So we went to see Zach the Hutt, who’s a total douche. But _then_ Cas's friend Inias came looking for you, and he seemed like an OK guy.”

“Inias!” said Castiel, perking up for what seemed the first time. “Yes, he is an honorable Jedi.”

“Well, we're working with him now!” Dean said. Even though his brother had seemed less than enthusiastic. Seriously, what was up with Sam these days? Cas was a cool guy. Just wait until they met, then Sam would come around. This had been totally the right call. Even if there wasn't a bounty in it for them.

“So why is Darth Abaddon after your Jedi butt?” a Loki asked Cas as the twins studied the paper.

“What have you done now?”

“I have no idea,” said Cas. “You say the bounty was placed by Abaddon?”

The Loki twins were scanning the paper now, and completing each other's sentences. “Says here it's the Hutts – we managed to piss 'em off – by stealing you – wasn't our fault – how many guys have a carbonite freezing chamber in their basement? – but then it says this is under Abaddon's orders – why would the Imperials mess with the Hutts? – or the Hutts mess with the Imperials – same difference.”

“This is a matter of concern,” said Cas, employing a rare flare for understatement.

“He wanted you back before some kind of shindig at the Grand Arena,” Dean remembered.

“So we're turning the ship around then?” asked Loki. Or it may have been Gabriel. Dean had lost track. He should probably straighten them out.

“Yeah, guess so,” said Loki/Gabriel. One of the twins. The other ducked out and returned with a pile of clothes. “You probably oughta get some pants on then, bro,” he said, handing the clothes to Dean. “Dean will help.” He waggled his eyebrows once again, and then the twins vanished, although one of them peeked around the corner and gestured at Dean.

“Dean?” asked Castiel. And then, “Oh, you introduced yourself. You are Dean Winchester. Come to rescue me.”

“Hey, no problem,” Dean assured him, glad that Cas couldn't see his face color. “Come on, let's get you into these clothes. That'll help you warm up.”

Cas nodded. He set down the flask he'd been sipping from and got to his feet. Oddly enough, he seemed weaker now that he wasn't in battle mode. He set down the blanket that had been draped over his shoulders, and Dean helped him shrug into a shirt. Dean noticed two odd markings that traced down Castiel's back, one on either side of his spine. They looked somewhat like scars, or perhaps a strange tattoos. But then the shirt was on, and they were hidden again.

Dean pointed down to Cas's pajamas and said, “Let's get these off so we can get you into some pants.” Cas put a hand on Dean's shoulder to steady himself and then tugged off the pajama pants without a thought. Dean blinked. He did have a nice ass. For a Jedi. Not that Dean had met a whole lot of Jedis.

“How long … will it take for my sight to return?” Cas was asking.

“I think it ought to come back pretty quick,” Dean babbled, helping Cas step into the pants and trying not to look. He decided to occupy himself getting the boots out. “My little brother looked up some of the symptoms of hibernation sickness when we took the case. That's Sam. You'll meet him soon.”

Cas's hands fumbled on the shirt buttons, so Dean took up buttoning for him. “There is no need for you to help,” Cas told him.

“Hey, I uncorked you, I figure you're kind of my responsibility.” 

And then Cas's hand was on his face. Dean held his breath. “I apologize. I attacked you! I was confused, and had assumed you were an enemy. That was not an appropriate use of my training. Did you sustain any injuries?”

Dean broke into a grin. “Hey, a couple bruises, but I'm great. I've had worse. _Much_ worse!” Cas's eyes were really blue, and very close and he appeared very concerned right now. 

His lips looked very soft.

“All right, strap yourselves in, kiddies!” announced one of the twins, who was suddenly in the cabin with them. “We're heading in for a landing.”

Dean took a self-conscious step backwards from Cas, only to be ushered over to a couch and pushed down nearly on top of the Jedi. Dean tried to give him a bit of space, but then the space ship jerked (Loki was definitely the worst star pilot in the galaxy), and Cas ended up more or less sitting in Dean's lap. 

“I apologize,” said Cas.

“No problem,” said Dean, who happened to notice that Cas smelled _really_ nice. 

For a Jedi, that is.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Just a warning for people who hate that ship: this chapter has some Sam/Ruby. We'll get to some Dean/Cas soon, I promise, but not yet._
> 
> _Oh, and we're at about the halfway point of the maniscript with this one, page 50 of 100, more or less._

“Seriously, Dean?” said Sam. “We don't know anything about this guy.”

Dean paused in the kitchen doorway, a tray with an array of sandwiches and tiny morsels clutched in his hands. “Hey, you’re the one who was always starry-eyed about all those angel stories we used to hear. And you’re also the one who wanted to bring him in.”

“For the bounty. Remember bounties, Dean? As in, 'bounty hunters?'”

Dean shrugged and came up with his best “aw, shucks” grin. “Besides, he smells really nice.”

“You're out of your fucking mind.”

Dean's grin widened. He hustled back over to their table, where he continued doting on the Jedi, as he had been doing since the ship had returned: Dean, Castiel, and not one but _two_ Tricksters. 

The cantina was closed now, but Gabriel and Loki evidently owned a stake in the place, so it was just them and that other Jedi, Inias. Dean had been using the small kitchen to cook snacks for his newest obsession. Sam rolled his eyes as Dean broke off a bit of sandwich and literally began to hand feed it to the dark-haired Jedi. Supposedly Castiel was suffering from hibernation sickness, but Sam knew his brother was definitely the sick one.

“You think they want our pearls?” Gabriel was saying. Dean, like most people, had trouble telling the twins apart, but they had different Force signatures, and Sam now knew why they had given him the creeps right off the bat. They were Force-sensitive, but covered it up, like Sam did. Gabriel had insisted that all Diathim were that way, but Sam suspected this family was moreso. Castiel radiated Force energy – Sam could swear he saw literal lines of power around the guy. Maybe that's why Dean was so besotted. 

“There is a new leader rising in the Sith hierarchy,” said Inias, who sat with hands folded, ignoring his beer. “Little is known of him but his name: Darth Lucifer.”

“Dumb name,” snorted Loki, but he and Gabriel and Castiel all exchanged a significant glance.

“He is said to be one of Darth Abaddon's closest allies.”

“Darth Abaddon? You mean the Sith Academy headmaster?” asked Sam, which got a funny look from Dean. Sam ignored his brother.

“The same.”

“I had heard Lucifer was killed in the fighting,” said Cas, his voice taking on a wistful tone.

“He died long ago,” said Gabriel, suddenly serious. 

“There are rumors swirling around that he remains alive,” said Inias. “Our Bothan spies have reported that he was seeking some kind of weapon out here, on an Outer Rim planet.”

Cas blinked and accepted another morsel of sandwich from Dean. “Gabriel, you initially lured me out here with a story about an unusual dragon pearl.”

“And the best part is I wasn't even lyin'!” said Gabriel, breaking out a big grin. 

Inias made a sour face. “I'm sorry to bring this up, Castiel, but can we trust your brothers?”

“Absolutely not,” Cas told him.

“But you can trust our untrustworthiness!” said Loki as he and Gabriel exchanged a smug smile.

Gabriel swiped a hunk of Cas's sandwich, which earned a dirty look from Dean. “You guys use the Krayt dragon pearls to focus the plasma beams on your lightsabers. There's a legendary type of pearl. They say that long ago, a Jedi named Colt used one to fabricate a different kind of saber. A special kind. It had less smack than the usual, but it was easier to control. The pearl somehow negated some of the plasma's spin.”

“I don't get it,” said Dean. “Why would you want a _less_ powerful saber?”

“Because then someone who's not trained in the ways of the Force could use it,” said Sam, who was still sulking in the kitchen doorway.

“And we have a winnah!” said Gabriel. 

“That makes sense,” said Inias. “According to our intelligence, though the Sith have scored many victories in this war....”

“A war _they_ initiated,” Castiel noted with a scowl.

“...they are taking losses, and are having trouble sustaining their ranks. Under the new leadership of Darth Abaddon, they are now taking in a number of … _unusual_ candidates at the Sith Academy. But they are still not keeping up the number of personnel needed in this war.”

Cas was nodding. “Yes. Then it would make sense for them to be seeking out a weapon suitable for the less adept.”

“So, you got one of these magic pearls in your basement lair, Gabe?” asked Dean.

“No!” said Gabriel.

“But we know where to find one!” Loki added.

The twins grabbed a map and unrolled it on the tabletop, right over Cas's sandwiches. Dean grumbled and retrieved the food while the twins pointed out an area past the Dune Sea.

The twins narrated: “Here it is – we found the location – the forbidden Krayt dragon graveyard – it's said to be here – waiting inside one of the skeletons – for someone to claim it.”

“Wait! Why hasn't someone gone there and found a dragon pearl already?” asked Dean, wiping some mustard off his hand and onto the map.

“What part of _forbidden_ do you not understand?” said Loki, irritably pulling the map out of Dean's grasp.

“No one has ever returned alive from the Krayt dragon graveyard!”

“But Loki, Gabriel, that makes no sense!” Cas protested. “If no one's ever returned, how do you know Colt’s pearl might be there?”

“We know!” chorused Loki and Gabriel.

“Watch out for my sammich, dammit!” said Dean.

Sam rolled his eyes at the bickering, and then gave a small huff as he was yanked backwards into the kitchen when someone grabbed the back of his shirt. He turned around, and she put a finger to his lips and led him through the room, and then out the back door. The air had grown cold, but Sam didn't notice. 

“Dammit, Ruby,” whispered Sam. “I looked for you.”

The alleyway was deserted, but she was nervous – it was coming off her in waves. She didn't look back, but kept pulling him along. “Yeah, like I was gonna hang out with you when there's two Jedi around. What the hell, have you been breeding them?”

“Castiel. Our bounty, remember?”

“Yeah. You weren't supposed to defrost the sucker.”

“Dean doesn't always follow directions. And where the hell are we going?” He slapped her hand away and stood in the alleyway. Where was he being led to this time? He had a flashback to following that little hooded figure around, and getting himself trapped like a womp rat in a cage. 

She stood still for a moment, and seemed to come back to herself. “I put in a good word for you with the management. We saw you. We saw what you did with that ship.”

Sam's breath caught. “I almost had it! I felt like I could have stopped it. I just...” She grabbed his hand, and this time he didn't resist. She led him off to another side alley, and then in through a low, curved doorway. She fastened the door behind her, setting some Force-proof locks. 

But this place wasn't dark and worn, like the little tridactyl's place. Everything here seemed knife-sharp and clear. 

“You could have done it,” she told him, finally turning from where she had been fussing with the locks. “We're pretty sure you could have. You're powerful, Sam. You just have to tap into it.”

Sam looked around but there wasn't a chair, so he sat down on the bed. He drew a hand through his hair. “Maybe if I hadn't been … so fucking scared.”

“No, Sam!” Now she was on the floor in front of him, grasping both of his hands in her small ones. “You don't understand! Why are you all so stupid?”

“What?”

“That's how you tap into it!” She looked up, her dark eyes pleading. “You use it! Fear, anger! That's how you tap into the _real_ power.” She let go one of his hands, and tapped his chest with a small finger. “And you, boy, you're powerful!”

Sam caught her hand on his chest. “But … isn't that … the dark side?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, what a bunch of crap! Don't listen to the Jedi! That's not how you use your power. You'll end up like Mr. Dried Up Prune, the Jedi you guys defrosted. Damn, talk about a guy who needs to get some!”

Sam looked at her hand. It was small and pretty, and it was so, so cold. He wanted to warm her up, gather her up and keep her safe.

“You're better than this, Sam. Search your feelings. You know it's true! Doing crappy bounty hunter jobs for small change – it's beneath you.”

“What do I do?” he asked her. “How do I start?”

She looked up at him, sitting down there, between his legs. The stars were in her eyes. She pulled her hands down, and ran them up the tops of his thighs. “What do you want, Sam?”

He pulled her to him, all at once, holding her, pressing his lips to her, wrapping arms around her. She was pale and cold, and she held universes inside.

 

“I saw it with my own eyes, Castiel. But more than that, I _sensed_ it. The way he held onto Gabriel's ship – there was power. Dark side power.”

“The boy bears watching,” Castiel told Inias as they stood watching the night sky, the desert wind blowing sharp and cool. Inias was shivering, but not, Cas thought, from the chill. 

“I believe _you_ are watching the wrong brother,” sniffed Inias.

“Dean has been very … helpful with my recovery,” Castiel told him. He sensed a great good in the elder Winchester's character. Perhaps it was affection, but it was helpful to be around a comforting presence while he was still ill.

“I think you are suffering from more than hibernation sickness.”

Castiel regarded his brother Jedi. His vision had cleared up enough to sense the concern in Inias's expression. “I am well aware of the temptations of the flesh, Inias. After all, remember, Gabriel and Loki are my brothers.”

“I don't know if I should leave you alone.”

“We discussed this, Inias. I will go in search of that dragon pearl – that appears to be at the center of this mess. If we know of its existence, then the Sith must be aware as well. Better this new weapon ends up in our hands. And someone needs to report back to the order,” he added, putting a friendly hand on Inias's shoulder. “Perhaps I will be able to divine more information on Abaddon, and Lucifer if this quest is successful.”

Inias shook his head. “Going out to the Forbidden Krayt graveyard with those two?”

“I think the Winchester brothers are trustworthy.”

“I meant _your_ brothers! Remember, Castiel, they just kidnapped you. Encased you in carbonite!”

Castiel burst out laughing. “I think my brothers are done with their mischief. For now. They were only bringing me back to Iego for the bounty my father offered. And now the treasure of a Krayt pearl offers more remuneration.”

“And the Winchesters?”

Well, that was another matter. Sam Winchester was bursting with raw Force, and the anger brimmed in him. He would be tempted. But maybe there was still time to intervene? “We both know that amount of pure, untutored Force power can be dangerous. Perhaps our meeting was not by chance? Perhaps I can provide some guidance.”

“Or get blown up trying!”

Castiel smiled wryly. “I've already been frozen in carbonite on this escapade. What else could go wrong?” 

“Don't say that!” 

Inias finally got into his speeder, and Cas sent him off with another chuckle and a wish that the Force be with him. He was a good friend, and an honorable Jedi, but he did tend to fuss. Life was risk, after all.

“He's going?”

Cas turned to see Gabriel and Loki, seeming uncharacteristically serious. They hadn't really come up, there were just there. Angels could do that sometimes. _“Inias is departing. As you requested, my brothers, though I am not certain this is the best course. If this truly is our brother returned-”_

_“Lucifer is dead, Castiel,”_ said Gabriel. _“You must have sensed it, as we did.”_

Castiel shivered with the memory. _“I felt … a disturbance. But, it did not feel … right, somehow. It was not as when our mother passed.”_

_“He is become one with the Living Force, my brother.”_

_“But if he lives?”_

There was a silence. The desert wind whispered. _“Then better one of us does what needs be done,”_ Gabriel said with finality.

_“Your bounty hunter is coming,”_ whispered Loki.

“He's not mine,” laughed Cas as the back door clattered open.

“ _He is,”_ said Gabriel. “You had better get to beddie-bye early, Deano,” he told Dean.

“No foolin' around, you two,” added Loki, as the twins nodded to each other.

“We're gettin' an early start!” said Gabriel. 

“Off with the dawn!”

Dean nodded a bit grumpily as Cas's brothers made their way back inside. “We gotta ride _banthas_ , Cas?”

Castiel regarded Dean Winchester. Now that his eyes had recovered, he could see Dean's visage: the steady, calloused hands and sincere green eyes. It was not as lovely as his true form, which comprised part of the Living Force, of course. It had been a great comfort when Cas had been released from hibernation, chilled and confused, to feel Dean's steady presence nearby. 

Cas reached out a hand and gripped Dean's shoulder with genuine affection. 

“Dude, they stink.”

“They do have a distinctive odor,” Castiel told him. “You get used to it, after a time. Believe me.”

“You've ridden them before?”

Cas nodded. “It's really the only way to explore some of the further reaches of this planet. And my brothers have acquaintanceships among the sand people, so usually bring along the tamer beasts.”

They remained silent for a while, just watching the desert landscape, the slow, relentless progression of the wandering dunes. Cas felt comfortable in the silence. It seemed to wrap around them, like soft wings.

“You ever been out to this dragon graveyard?”

“No. I don't think many have.” He gazed at Dean. “You needn't go, not if you don't want to.”

“We're walkin' right into a trap, aren't we?”

“As a Jedi knight, I seem to spend a lot of my time doing such things,” said Cas with a small smile. 

“Well, if you're going, I'm going with you.”

He put out a hand and squeezed Dean's shoulder. “It will be good to have you at my side, Dean.”

That remark made Dean breathe in. His body language was telling two different stories: his head shaking with disbelief, eyes rolling, but somehow he also now stood up a little straighter. Clearly, Dean Winchester didn't know his own true worth. Well, he would just have to learn. “I looked for my brother, but he's not in our room. Wonder where he's run off to?”

“My brothers said they saw Sam in the company of one of the new barmaids.”

“Oh!” Dean smiled. “Good for him!” 

Yes, the night before a long expedition – it made sense. Sam was gaining comfort where he could. And these intimate encounters were a comfort to humans.

Dean was studying him again. “So, you’re an angel? A real one?”

“Do I seem real to you?” 

Dean shyly tapped him on the shoulder, and then shrugged. “I thought it was just a story. I mean, Sammy believed it, but you know how the spacers tell tall tales.”

“My people, the Diathim, tend to keep to themselves. It is not surprising to me that we are the subject of rumors and speculation.”

“You got wings, and everything?”

“Wings. And everything.” 

Dean was looking him up and down. “And the wedding? You've really never.... I mean, never?”

If Cas had had his wings out, he would have pulled them around himself to hide. Dean didn't know his shame. 

“Hey, didn't wanna make you uncomfortable!” Dean sounded sincerely contrite.

“It's all right,” Cas told him, though he felt wretched. This, more than anything else, was what finally pushed him to join the Jedi Order. “I'm- You wouldn't see it, but, for my people, I'm … deformed.”

Dean fairly radiated disbelief. “OK. Um, hey. I did see you, you know, when you came outta hibernation. I mean, you looked fine to me. Everything … where it's supposed to be. You know?”

Cas's cheeks burned hot. “That's … kind of you.” He looked away, deeply embarrassed. 

“Sorry. But, um, anyway. _Banthas_ , huh?”

Cas looked out over the desert. “Yes. And please believe me, Dean, everything will be fine.”

 

Everything was _not_ fine.

Cas crouched next to Dean, a soothing hand on his shoulder. Dean looked up from where he had spent the last few moments retching up everything in his digestive system out onto the floor of the narrow, rocky canyon where they’d stopped to rest.

Cas’s brothers had provided two mounts, a couple of young bull banthas, for this journey into the desert. Cas hadn't asked the source – he found this was usually the best course when dealing with his brothers. He had traveled before across the vast deserts of Tatooine with his brothers: he found the ecology fascinating, although Gabriel and Loki were inevitably seeking riches. Travelers usually rode during the night time, in order to avoid the relentless heat of Tatooine's binary sun system, but it was decided that speed was of the essence, so they did not pitch camp with the breaking dawn, but only pressed onwards.

Dean had held up as best he could throughout the early morning, but by mid-afternoon, as the suns ascended in the sky, the combination of the heat and the swirling motion of the beasts of the mounts had finally overwhelmed the bounty hunter. 

Gabriel claimed that they were quite near to the Krayt graveyard, so he and Loki had taken the swifter animal and ridden ahead while Dean took a much-needed break to empty the roiling contents of his poor stomach.

Kneeling, sweating and shivering, on the dirt of the canyon floor, Dean shuddered, and, after one more bout of dry heaves, finally sat back on his heels. “What the hell is wrong with those things?” he croaked, pointing up towards his mount.

“I don't believe you, Dean,” said Sam, leaning against the canyon wall, chugging water from a metal canteen. He handed off the canteen to Cas, who proffered it to Dean. “I mean, you do all that insane stuff in your ship, loop-the-loops all day, and it's never bothered you.”

“These furry bastards suck! And my ship has never smelled anywhere near this bad! It stinks like it's rotting from the inside.”

As if in answer, the bantha standing nearby calmly emptied its bowels and continued chewing its cud.

Dean made a face. “Yeah, thanks buddy.”

“Dean?” said Cas, as he helped Dean move over, away from the sick and into the shade of a nearby rock formation.

“Yeah, Cas?” Dean asked as Cas got him sitting with his back against a rock.

“With your permission, I am going to help you sleep for a little while.”

Cas held out two fingers towards Dean's forehead, but Dean grabbed his wrist. “Can you just kill me instead? Please? It would be a mercy killing.”

Cas smiled, and then touched Dean's forehead. Dean slumped, and Cas settled him down.

“Neat trick,” chuckled Sam.

Cas stayed crouched next to Dean, watching him sleep. “It is a more gentle use of the Force. I don't believe your brother is usually a weak-minded sort, but in his present state, he is more open to suggestion.”

“I don't believe him getting spacesick like this. He usually has a durasteel stomach!”

Satisfied that Dean was sleeping peacefully, Cas stood. He took Sam’s arm, and lead him away a few paces, so as not to disturb Dean. “Your brother is a good star pilot then?”

“The best.”

Castiel paused a moment. So confident, full of conviction. Sam Winchester honestly believed his brother was literally the best star pilot in the galaxy. But at the same time, the boy was so full of anger. He reminded Cas so very much of himself, long, long ago.

“If you wouldn't mind keeping watch over your brother for a little while, I was going to meditate while we wait for my brothers to come back.”

“Why would you need to meditate?” Sam asked. 

“That's a good question, Sam. I find it centers me.”

“I thought you Jedi guys were already mellowed out?”

Cas looked over at Dean and sighed. “Perhaps I'm not a terribly good Jedi.”

“That's not true!” Sam suddenly became animated. “My brother told me you came out of hibernation and slammed him through a wall!” He smashed his hands together, obviously relishing the image.

Cas's head dropped to the side, studying the younger Winchester. “Is that what you think qualifies one as being a good Jedi? The exercise of raw power?”

Sam threw up his arms. “Why do you keep answering questions with questions?”

Cas cracked a smile. “Why do you _think_ I answer questions with questions?”

“OK, enough! Enough! You remind me too much of someone.”

“Who?”

Sam hesitated. “Someone I met. It doesn’t matter,” he finally said, shaking his head. “Why did you become a Jedi, anyway, Cas?” 

Cas really did need to meditate. Since his release from the carbonite-induced hibernation, and his introduction to the Winchester brothers, his mind had been uncharacteristically restless. On the other hand, perhaps he could do some good here? Sam was strong with the Force, but didn’t seem to have gotten much guidance in this regard. “You’re wishing for a heroic story, aren’t you, Sam?”

“Again with the questions!”

Cas decided to relent. “My family can be … irksome. You’ve met Gabriel and Loki, of course.” Sam merely rolled his eyes and made one of his faces. “Believe me, they’re the best of the lot. I do love my family, but the twins are the only ones I can bear being around. Diathim are … well, we’re rather steeped in tradition. When I left, I was angry. I felt out of place. In other words, I was catastrophically unqualified for Jedi training.”

Sam’s eyes grew wide. “You? You’re kidding.”

“I am not my brothers. I rarely engage in jest.”

Sam didn’t look finished with the conversation. Cas remained silent. “Then, you didn’t want to be part of something bigger? You didn’t want to … make your mark?”

“No. Definitely not. Finding my mission came later. I was supremely lucky that we Diathim are naturally endowed with a deep connection to the Force. Otherwise, I doubt my teachers would have wasted their time on such a poor pupil.”

Sam was mulling this over when Cas sensed a disturbance in the Force. Sam too suddenly looked around. Cas grabbed Sam’s arm. “Do you sense it too?” 

“Something…. Are your brothers coming back?” Sam asked. His eyes had gotten unfocused.

“No.” Cas grabbed Sam by the shoulders and held his gaze. “Sam. Watch over your brother. But don’t make any threatening gestures. This is very important! Listen! Do as I say!”

Sam nodded, though he had yet to comprehend the threat. He went to stand over where Dean was still in the middle of his Force-induced nap, pulling out a blaster and keeping it gripped in his hands.

Meanwhile, Cas strode out to the center of the canyon. He pulled out his saber, but didn’t ignite it. 

He didn’t have to wait long.

The enormous Krayt dragon lumbered into view, sniffing the air.

Behind his back, Cas could hear Sam’s intake of breath.

It was a mid-sized female, meaning it was large as a transport, with jaws big enough to easily take a healthy bite of a bantha haunch, or swallow a Jedi whole.

The bantha, which was evidently no fool, immediately turned tail and charged off at great speed in the opposite direction down the canyon. 

Cas cursed under his breath. He really should have meditated: this was going to take some doing. He stilled his mind, and raised a hand. The Krayt’s mind was roiling, so it took a long, tense moment while the monster loomed over him to engage it. The dragon slowly approached, nostrils dilating, snorting and flaring the tufts at the side of its head. Two sets of broad horns twisted back from the crest of its head. From the banding, Cas estimated the beast was a mature female. She was probably of breeding age then: that would explain the aggressive behavior. 

There in her mind, he saw it: the image of a nest. The mother was protecting her younglings. All right, he would use this. Maybe young Sam would learn from example. He fixated on the thought of the young hatchlings. He could sense her troubled mind latching onto this image. Back to the nest, he urged.

Suddenly, then the mother reared up and snapping her jaws. Cas sensed movement behind him. Without turning, he flicked a hand back. Sam let out a small cry as the weapon he’d raised dropped from his hand. Cas needed to calm the dragon, not set her into a defensive mode. As swiftly as he could, Cas concentrated on the young, and visions of the nest, trying to turn her mind back to maternal urges. She loved her young, and needed to return. Yes, return to the nest as quickly as possible. Nest and hatchlings. Nest and hatchlings....

The dragon abruptly whipped around and thundered back out of the canyon. Cas, startled by his success, had to throw himself to the ground to keep from being beheaded by the snap of her tail. When the dust had cleared, he raised himself up on his hands and knees and watched her disappear over the ridge. 

He sat back, panting with the effort, as Sam bounded over. “Cas, did you do that? Did you send it away?”

“Always more questions,” said Cas with a small smile. “Yes, I planted the suggestion that she was needed elsewhere.”

“But that thing was big! It was big as a spaceship!” Sam extended a hand and Cas took it, getting to his feet.

“Its mind works the same as yours and mine. A little more primitive perhaps.”

“Wish Dean had been awake to see.” 

Cas's eyes drifted over to Dean. He had slept through the whole thing! Cas smiled.

And then he heard the sound of drumming footsteps in the distance. 

“Your brothers this time?” asked Sam. “I hope?”

Cas didn't have to answer. A bantha came charging up the canyon.

“We found it! We found it!” Loki cried. 

“It's just around the bend!” echoed Gabriel. “The forbidden Krayt graveyard.”

 

Before they could move on to the graveyard, there was a delay while Loki and Cas rode off to retrieve the bantha that had fled from the Krayt dragon, Loki declaring, “I'll never get my deposit back!” 

They returned rather more quickly than Sam had bargained for, though the beast was anything but apologetic about its cowardice. 

And they brought along an unexpected companion.

“I guess they're friends now,” said Cas apologetically. 

Walking beside the bantha was a lovely white, four-legged creature. It had short fur over most of its body, with some rather longer hair along the ridge of the spine leading down its slender neck, and a splendid long-furred tail. It was wearing some man-made gear: a saddle and bridle. Was it some kind of exotic beast of burden?

“I'll be damned! A horse!” said Dean, who had finally roused from his Force-induced nap. 

“Does it have enough legs?” Sam wondered, as he re-counted the slender legs.

“Yeah, they're not native,” Loki explained. “But sometimes the Tusken chieftans will trade for them. Trouble is, they have no fucking idea how to ride 'em, so the poor little guys sometimes end up abandoned.”

“Hell yeah!” said Dean. “Come here, buddy!” he urged.

“Careful, Dean!” Cas warned, but Dean ambled right up to the horse and began petting its long nose. And then, before anyone could object, he was around the side and somehow lifted himself up into the saddle.

“Dean!” Cas exclaimed, but the same was already trotting around on the new creature, whooping and generally having the time of his life. 

The bantha, its companion, snorted and took a rather noisy shit on the ground.

“Damn!” said Gabriel, who was obviously impressed. “I've heard about riding them, but I've never seen it done.”

“He does this kind of stuff,” Sam sighed. Cas frowned at him, though he didn’t say anything.

“I want one,” said Loki. 

“I want one too,” agreed Gabriel.

“We should be getting on to the graveyard,” Cas reminded them.

“All right!” said Dean, who rode ahead, and then pulled a 180 and rode back. “Uh, which way?”

“I'll hop on and guide you!” Loki volunteered. He made a run at the horse, leapt up (presumably to sit behind Dean) but then ended up landing on his butt when suddenly the horse wasn't where he thought it was.

“Wait, can these things teleport?” Loki asked.

“He doesn't like you,” said Dean.

“Let me try,” said Cas, who walked tentatively over to the horse again. He put a hand on its flank. It stilled, and snorted, and he flinched.

“How can you be so calm with a Krayt dragon but not a horse?” Sam asked.

“C'mon, Cas, quit, foolin' around,” said Dean, sticking out a hand. Cas took it, and found himself swept up to sit in back of Dean. Cas let out a small cry, and they trotted off.

“Wait,” said Loki, as the horse disappeared around a bend in the canyon, “Cas doesn't know where it is either.”

“I suppose we better get after them, huh?” said Gabriel.

“Yeah, I suppose so. Ready to mount up, troops?”

Sam stood for a moment, watching where his dumb brother and the equally dumb Jedi had disappeared. He'd never seen Dean so happy.

He followed Loki up to mount one of the banthas, and they lumbered on after Dean and Cas as best they could. “So if the graveyard is here, why don't the spacers like you just land here and clean it out?”

Loki urged on the bantha and grinned back at Sam. “Well, first off, as I gather you found out, Krayt graveyard means Krayts. You try to launch a ship after a big male has used it as a chew toy.”

“I see.”

“And second, sand! It'll kill speeders, and it'll definitely kill a ship. And that's when you're not in the middle of a sandstorm. Which can happen at any time on the Dune Sea, by the way.”

“But people have tried?”

“Oh, fuck yeah, they've tried. Wait 'til we get to the ridge overlooking the graveyard. There's almost as many speeder bike husks down there as there are skeletons. You'd have to be an idiot to bring a ship in here.”

“So we're not idiots?”

“Oh, we're full on idiots.”

 

The Krayt dragon graveyard was in the floor of a vast valley that opened up in the middle of the Dune Sea. They rode up on a ridge until they had a fairly good view of the entire expanse. As Loki had said, the floor was littered with hundreds upon hundreds of Krayt dragon carcasses in various states of decay. The white bones were everywhere. And beside them were the twisted remains of various speeders and bikes, and even a couple of space ships.

The wind howled through the barren valley. It was spooky.

“They all come here to die?” Sam asked as they dismounted. “That seems incredible.”

“So they say!” said Loki.

“The beasts are semi-sentient, as you may have surmised from our encounter,” Cas told him. He and Dean had dismounted from the white horse, and Dean was grabbing down a bag of bantha feed to offer him. 

Sam nodded at the Jedi. Cas was one crazy motherfucker. He was obviously powerful as hell, but for some reason, he had chosen the risky course of talking down a mad Krayt mama rather than slicing and dicing her to dragon nuggets with his lightsaber. It was weird. And all, seemingly, all to make some kind of Zen Jedi point.

Kind of reminded Sam of his brother.

Loki and Gabriel were conferring again. Talk about weird: Sam was close to his own brother, but these guys seemed to share one brain between them, always talking over each other. Hard to believe these two were related to the solemn Jedi.

Cas was pointing to the far end of the canyon. Sam could dimly see movement. “That's reputed to be the spawning ground up there. There are almost always dragons there.”

“Wait, they hatch here too?”

“Alpha and omega,” said Cas, smiling his weird Jedi smile. 

“As long as we stay up on the ridge, we oughta be all right,” Gabriel was saying. “But you wanna limit the time you're fucking around down in the valley.” Loki had started to walk off down the ridge.

“So how are we gonna locate the right kinda pearl?” Dean asked. “I mean, if we can't go hunting around for it.”

“Me 'n Loki are gonna do some triangulation!” said Gabriel, who had taken off his jacket and was now unbuttoning his shirt.

“You're gonna get a tan?” Dean asked.

“My brothers are going to channel the Force energy,” Castiel explained. 

“You can find the Colt pearl that way?” asked Dean. But he was suddenly distracted. Sam was as well. Gabriel had done something where he sort of shrugged his shoulders, and now he was wearing a pair of light brown-feathered wings. 

“We are Diathim,” said Cas softly. “Angels. Wings. And everything.”

“That's amazing,” said Dean, who was staring openly at Gabe. As for Gabriel, he headed out towards the ridge, and looked up at his brother, who had also sprouted wings.

“The wings channel the Force energy,” said Cas. 

“You have wings too, right?” Dean asked him. Cas nodded, dryly amused, and Sam just rolled his eyes. 

“All right, quiet down in the peanut gallery!” yelled Gabriel, who was kneeling down, wings spread wide. “We need to meditate on that pearl.”

“You can locate it this way?” asked Dean.

“Duh,” Gabriel answered. 

“They utilize the Living Force to locate items. Usually when there's some monetary value attached,” Cas whispered.

“I heard that!”

“Oh, like I've done,” said Sam.

“What?” Now Gabriel had turned around to stare at Sam. 

Sam looked at Dean and Cas a bit defensively. “I can sometimes use the Force to track stuff.”

“Well get down here and help, buddy boy!” Gabriel hopped to his feet, grabbed Sam by the wrist and dragged him over to kneel beside him. “Just follow my lead.”

“I don't even know what you're doing!”

“All will be revealed!” said Gabriel. He signaled up to Loki, and then both of them grew silent, wings stretched out. Sam resisted at first, annoyed that he'd been dragged in, but he was also curious, so he relaxed and thought about the pearl. 

All at once, the valley below shifted into sharp relief. “There ya go,” Gabriel murmured, still gripping Sam's arm. Gabriel's bright golden brown wings arched up in back of them. And somehow, Sam knew what they were searching for – he sensed it, a tiny speck in the vast desert, but it was emitting a unique energy signature. Somehow, it was warping the strong, straight lines of the Living Force.

Sam was flying over the desert now – not literally, of course, but his mind was set free to roam the vast, bleak valley on the power of the life energy that bound the cosmos. He was part of everything, everywhere....

“Focus, dammit,” Gabriel chided. Loki, up above, was zeroing in. Sam didn't know how he knew, but he knew. There was now a line through the valley, reaching out from Loki, sliding through the desert, cutting through the location of the pearl. Sam followed Gabriel for a time as he tried to pin down the location of the pearl.

“There it is!” Sam wasn't certain if he actually said it aloud, but he jerked towards it, carrying a protesting Gabriel with him. “Here, here, here it is!” It was so obvious! 

“Sammy?” asked Dean as Sam leapt up to grab the binoculars out of his hands. Gabriel sat back and exhaled a moan as Sam focused them on the desert. 

“There, see? That skeleton!” Sam pointed as Dean blinked at him. Cas was helping Gabriel to his feet, and Loki had leapt down to attend to his brother as well.

“Wow,” said Gabriel, rubbing his head. “That kid has a kick to him.”

“It's on the opposite side of the valley, dammit,” said Loki. He looked back the way they had come. “We may want to backtrack and take it from that end.”

“We gotta be quick, right?” asked Dean. He gave a low whistle, and the horse pranced over to stand beside him.

“How does he do that?” asked Gabriel.

“Buddy and I can make a quick job of it!” Dean announced.

“He's _named_ the horse,” said Loki.

“He does that kind of thing,” Sam told them.

“I'm not certain this is a good idea, Dean,” said Cas.

“I'm full of bad ideas.” Dean stuck out his hand again. Cas breathed in, as if steeling himself, and then he was once again up on the horse behind Dean, and they were tearing off across the valley floor.

“They're gonna get killed,” said Gabriel, who was putting his shirt back on. The wings had gone: Sam hadn't noticed when he hid them.

“Won't be the first time,” said Loki, who had taken up the binoculars and was watching them ride. 

Yeah, there Dean went, riding off to be the big hero, while Sammy stayed back, wrestling the pig. He strained his eyes, and saw, dimly in the distance, Castiel igniting his lightsaber. They must have reached the carcass. Well, at least there was one dirty job he wouldn’t get. And then the saber was off and the speck that was his brother, Cas and the horse began riding back.

There was a rumbling overhead. “Dammit! We’ve got company coming!” yelled Gabriel.

Sam turned his gaze skyward. A large ship was apparently attempting a landing in the valley nearby. “I thought you said spacers would be insane to fly out here?”

“So these guys are insane,” said Gabriel.

“This is not good!” said Loki.

“No shit,” said Sam.

“Look!” Loki was now pointing down the canyon, towards the Krayt spawning ground. There was a lot more movement there now. 

“They move fast, don’t they?” asked Gabriel. Sam noticed he had gathered the reigns for the Banthas. Both of them looked skittish, though whether it was due to the approaching spaceship or the Krayts, Sam had no clue.

“What are you doing?” asked Sam, but Gabriel had hopped up astride one of the banthas. The other knelt down, and Loki began to mount up as Gabriel started to ride off.

Loki held out a hand to Sam. “Come on, kid! We gotta skedaddle.”

“What the fuck?” yelled Sam over the growing roar of the landing ship. “We can't leave. That’s my brother out there!”

“Your brother can take care of himself. That ship's got Imperial markings!”

“Krayts are coming this way!”

“So are the Sith. Come on! Now!” Loki stuck out his hand.

Sam waved him away. “I won’t leave my brother.”

Loki shook his head and muttered, “Your funeral!” And then he was up and the bantha was charging away, leaving Sam standing alone on the ridge.


	5. Chapter 5

The Imperial ship prepared to make a landing in the valley below, raising a whirlwind of dust and dirt. Sam ran to the ridge to check on his brother and Cas. They were approaching the ridge, riding swiftly astride the white horse, but the Krayts were moving faster still. About a half dozen had emerged from the spawning ground up at the far end of the valley and were now charging down on a direct path to intercept Dean and Cas.

The rumbling from overhead grew louder. Sam ducked his head as a sandstorm kicked up nearby: the Imperial pilots landed their ship down on the valley floor, crushing brittle skeletons and whipping up the dust as it came to a precarious rest on the uneven, sandy ground. 

The roaring finally ceased as the engines cut out, though whether on purpose, or because they'd gotten clogged with sand – the ship was tilted to one side – Sam couldn't say. He reached back and grabbed the blaster rifle off his back. A moment later a ramp awkwardly lowered from the ship and some Imperial troopers stumbled out onto the sand. They had positioned the ship between Sam, up on the ridge, and where Dean and Cas were riding back astride the white horse. The troopers, he hoped, didn't see him yet, but he readied his gun. Dean and Cas galloped nearer, with about a half dozen Krayt dragons still moving in, tails whipping, teeth glinting in the sun.

There was a flash of a weapon as the Imperials began shooting at his brother. But then suddenly Cas flipped off the back of the running horse, ignited his lightsaber, and landed between Dean and the troopers. He somehow deflected every single blast with the saber, and sent several of the blasts bouncing back to fell the Imperial soldiers.

Dean rode on towards the ridge, but right into the path of the Krayts. Didn't he see them? Dean halted the horse abruptly, and somehow held his mount still. They Krayts thundered past, and there was a moment when Sam lost sight of him, thinking surely he'd been trampled. But then the dust settled, and miraculously, Dean and the horse remained standing there, as the Krayts launched forth and began ripping apart the ship and tearing at the soldiers. The Imperial troopers tried to fend them off, but blasters were no match for the beasts, not unless you hit them in the eye, or inside the mouth (not a great idea) or managed to hit a spot on their body where the armor plating jointed. Sam made note of this. But why had the dragons ignored Dean? 

Sam was puzzling it out when his attention was directed back to the ship. His head turned, almost without him willing it. A tall, hooded figure emerged from the ship, seemingly oblivious to the chaos around her, and proceeded calmly down the ramp. As the troopers (the ones who were left anyway) provided some cover fire against the Krayt dragons, she strode out onto the desert sand, towards the ridge, up towards where Sam was standing. 

Sam had no idea who in hell it was, but she had a massive amount of Force presence – perhaps the most he had ever felt in another human being. He was mesmerized.

Someone cried out, and Sam's reverie was broken. Dean! Dean was off the horse now, and had somehow come to the attention of a small (or relatively small) dragon. While Cas remained distracted fending off the troopers, Dean – the idiot – placed himself between that damned horse and the Krayt.

“Dean!” Sam yelled. Holding tight to his rifle, he hurried down the ridge towards the valley floor to help his brother. 

Dean aimed a couple of blaster shots in the direction of the Krayt. Sam still wasn't sure what the hell his was doing, since he missed by a mile. Sam charged down and tried to hit the dragon between her armor plates, as he'd seen some of the troopers do.

“No, Sammy!” Dean yelled.

The Krayt turned towards Sam, her tail whipping around. The horse managed to leap out of the way, but Dean got knocked over. Sam tried a couple more pulses from the blaster rifle, but the Krayt still loomed over them. 

All right, he'd seen Castiel do this – why couldn't he?

Sam reached out with his Force power. The thing had to breathe, right? There should be a point in its throat that you could get ahold and start choking. He extended a hand, and felt for the place. It was large: so much larger than even the pig guy he'd wrangled with the other day. He tried to press harder, but felt weak. He dropped to his knees, struggling.

“Sammy!” Dean called.

Desperate, Sam tried to increase the pressure, but felt instead he was losing his grip. Dean! He had to help his brother. He had to.

“Now,” came a voice in his ear. Someone was gripping his shoulder. “Unleash your anger! Your fear!”

Sam gritted his teeth. The thing was going to kill Dean. He thought of the Gamorrean, and all the other trash he and Dean had caught over the years. Garbage of the universe. He was a garbage man. He reached out, and found a choke hold, squeezing the life out of the monster.

“No, Sam! That's not the way!” Another voice – Castiel maybe. 

The grip in his shoulder tightened, and Sam bore down. He heard something, somewhere far away, howling in pain. 

Everything clicked. Yes, this was the pressure point. Everything in the universe was connected. Everything was directed to one single point in the universe.

“Keep going,” said the voice by his ear. It was a female voice, calm and wise. “Use your anger, Sam Winchester.”

“Sammy!”

The Living Force crackled around him as the great beast gave up her life. She dropped to the valley floor with a thud. She fell, writhing, the tail giving a thump, and then was no more.

Sam took a breath.

Victorious.

“Very good, my apprentice. Very good. You did well.”

Sam looked up. Everything was still hazy. There was a tall, red-haired woman standing over him, still gripping his shoulder. “Darth Abaddon,” he said. It wasn't a question.

“I've been seeking you, Sam Winchester.”

“Me?” She was a vision, alongside the twin suns.

“Of course. Rise. Come with me now.”

She released his shoulder, turned, and strode away, not even checking if he was going to follow.

Of course he would folls. As if it was a dream, Sam hastened down after her, across the desert sands, and up into the ship.

“SAMMY!”

 

“Cas, we gotta go after him!”

Castiel glanced over at Dean. Both men were now crouched in back of the dead Krayt, holding off Imperial fire. Dean stuck his head out, but a blast nearly got him in the head. “Dammit! How did they get so many guys into that ship?”

Castiel peeked up over the carcass, slamming back a couple of blasts with his lightsaber.

“What are they doing now?” Dean asked.

“Going back onto the ship.”

“What? What the hell are they doing? They'll never get it off the ground. The motor's done from the sand – you could tell that from over here.”

Cas had turned to look in back of them. 

“What?” asked Dean, but then he heard a howl of some kind of horn, and the thunder of something big stampeding their way. “Dammit, more Krayts?”

“No,” said Cas, which was rather unhelpful. 

Horns sounded, and Dean stared up where Cas was looking. There were banthas now running over the ridge: a whole herd of them, with armed Tuskens astride them. The horns bleated some more, and then they set upon the Imperial troopers, trading fire.

“The cavalry is here!” hollered Dean.

The sound of a rumbling motor came from the Imperial space ship. 

“What the hell is going on now?”

“Dean,” said Cas, holding Dean's shoulder. “Remember what I told you. If you hold yourself calm, the Krayts will ignore you.”

“Cas?”

Castiel released his grip and hopped on top of the Krayt carcass. “Dean, I will get your brother back. I promise.”

“Cas-”

But before Dean could get out a sentence, there was a loud rumbling noise from the space ship. Cas leapt off the fallen Krayt dragon, ran across the canyon floor, repelling a few blasters, and then literally ran up the side of the Imperial ship.

Machinery fired up, and an escape pod emerged from the top of the ship. Cas leapt on top of the escape pod just as it launched. The pod hurtled away with the Jedi clinging to the outside.

“Cas! You moron!” Dean hollered.

The escape pod gained momentum, rising up over the side of the canyon. Dean ran to the canyon and ran up to the ridge, fast as he could go, ignoring the battle between the Tuskens and the Imperials. The escape pod made it over the lip of the canyon, and Dean saw a dark figure on top. He paused on the top of the ridge as the pod made its way across the Dune Sea, rocking and bucking, as if trying to shake off Cas.

As Dean watched, the pod grew smaller and smaller and smaller. Then suddenly it jerked to the side, and a dark object fell towards the desert below. The object suddenly sprouted dark wings, and glided downwards.

The escape pod vanished over the horizon.

Dean sat down, hard, on a pile of rocks. 

A hand was on his shoulder. “Was that my stupid brother?”

Dean looked up to see either Loki or Gabriel, he really didn't care which. “Your stupid brother and my stupid brother.” Gabe or Loki or whoever had a rivulet of blood trickling down his head.

“Well … shit.”

 

“You won't make it!”

“It's your brother,” Dean told Loki. This one was Loki, because the other twin had just called him that. Unless they were playing some kind of dumb game.

“He knew the risks,” said Gabriel. They were all poking around the ruins of the Imperial space ship. These people had also known the risks. The sand people had massacred them. They didn't take prisoners – that was just how you did things around here. After they'd managed to chase the remaining Krayts back to their nesting ground, the Tuskens had set to scavenging the space ship. Soon after, a group of the small, annoying creatures wearing dark robes – Gabriel said they were Jawas – had arrived in a preposterous vehicle and began bargaining for pieces of the wreckage. They seemed particularly interested in the droids, but the entire vehicle was being slowly stripped away, piece by piece.

“How the hell did they find us?” Dean asked.

“They may have heard the same rumors we did, about the pearl,” Loki speculated.

“Or she just followed your brother's Force signature,” added Gabriel. “That kid's got a helluva wallop.”

Gabriel and Loki, who were constantly looking at one another, exchanged a rather significant glance. “You think she was looking for Sam?” Dean had to ask, his voice strained.

“You know who that was, right?” Gabriel shot back.

“Bad news.” Dean looked off into the desert, towards where he'd last seen Cas. “I need to go.” He turned back to the twins, and fished something out of a pocket. He flipped it to Gabriel, and then whistled. Buddy the white horse came trotting over to him, and Dean mounted him.

Gabriel held the object in his palm. “This is the pearl.” The twins stared at it.

“Yep!” Dean reigned in Buddy.

“How do you know we won't just go sell it or something?”

“I don't.” He glanced back over his shoulder, nodded, and then struck out into the desert, riding hard.

 

Castiel sat down in the desert and prepared to die.

He had his wings out. This was how they would find his body, perhaps, with mummified wings spread overhead. 

Angel wings were no good for flying. It was a joke. According to learned opinion, they had evolved for flight long ago, in some distant ancestor. But in the current Diathim body plan they couldn't sustain much more than a glide – Castiel had strained his wings badly in his descent from the escape pod, desperately maneuvering to break his fall enough so as not to die on impact.

That might have been better, thinking back.

Diathim wings channeled Force power, and were sometimes used for sexual displays (not that Cas had ever used them for such, as his brothers would endlessly tease him about). And now, Cas's wings were out to keep the beating light of Tatooine's twin suns off his body, and to preserve his life just a few hours more. For he would surely die. That's what generally happened to travelers lost in the Dune Sea.

When the speck appeared on the horizon, he was quite convinced it was an illusion and that his vision was failing now at the end of his life. 

Fate was an odd thing. He could have been on his way to his wedding by now. With that Corellian. Oh, Lord. That is, if Dean Winchester hadn't released him from his carbonite prison.

He wondered if the twins would have made good on their mission to drag him back to Iego, of if, as so often happened before, they would somehow become distracted? Gabriel had always had difficulty obeying their father's commands. Thus, Loki, and that whole situation.

The speck grew steadily bigger.

Would they sense it, when he died? As he'd felt his mother passing, all those years ago? As he'd felt Lucifer. 

He wasn't so certain about Lucifer. No matter what his brothers claimed. There was something off about his passing, as if he'd not made it all the way to the other side. Cas reached out with his senses, thinking that now, as he was so close to death himself, he could feel the others, his beloved mother, and Lucifer, who had smiled at him so long ago....

Cas licked his dry lips. He nudged down a wing to peer into the desert. He had convinced himself he could hear it now: hoofbeats. Crazy, of course. He was about to die of dehydration.

Except his hallucination was now speaking to him. It wasn't saying much of interest, mostly repeating his name over and over, and forcing him to drink water. The water didn't taste very good, and it was warm. It made him a little nauseated.

“Cas!” 

“That is the shortened version of my name.”

“Cas!” 

Dean Winchester was holding his face. “This is a good hallucination,” Cas muttered.

“Drink, dammit.” 

“A really good hallucination. You are very attractive, Dean.”

“You need to get dehydrated more often,” the hallucination that looked like Dean told him. “So, you have wings, huh?”

Cas nearly spit out the water. He pulled in his wings tight to his sides. He didn't want Dean to see them. Not even his Dean hallucination. And things had been going so well!

“Hey, what's the matter? And keep drinking.”

“My wings.”

“Keep drinking! What's wrong with your wings?”

“Dark,” Cas admitted with a sigh. “Dark feathers. I'm a black feather. I'm bad luck. Bad luck.”

The hallucination that definitely wasn't Dean Winchester sat down cross-legged in front of him, while his (also presumably imaginary) horse whickered. “Do I look like good luck to you? I'm in the middle of the fucking desert with a half-dead angel, and I'm pretty sure my brother just fell to the dark side.”

“Not half dead,” Cas protested. “More like three quarters.”

Dean laughed. He looked so nice when he laughed.

“We'll get your brother back, Dean.”

“Well, we need to get back to your brothers first. Can you stand?” Dean stood, and offered Cas a hand. Cas attempted to stand, but wasn't certain of his balance. He ended up, somehow, standing with arms and wings wrapped around Dean.

“Wow! I wish we had more time,” laughed Dean. “Can we take a raincheck?”

“What?”

“We gotta mount up. I hate asking, but is there any way you can put away the wings for now?”

 

Generally, Loki and Gabriel didn't talk. They really didn't need to. 

But they were conversing now, in low voices, and in Enochian, the native language of the angels.

_“Where hast our brother gone?”_

_“Brother mine, do not let thine heart be troubled. Brother Castiel will return. The human boy will bring him.”_

They were sitting at the edge of the Tusken camp. More members of the tribe had showed up as the salvage on the space ship continued – distant relations were called in from the disparate clans that roamed the Tatooine deserts. They built a great pyre and burned the bodies of the slain warriors, as was traditional. The fallen Krayts were butchered and the various parts distributed amongst the people. Fires crackled in the dusk of the twin suns, and the smell of burning flesh wafted over everything.

Loki was noshing on a spit of BBQ Krayt meat. _“I fear the young one,”_ he related, licking his fingers. _“Great was his anger.”_

_“Dean Winchester’s heart is true,”_ Gabriel told him. As the older of the two, it was his duty to calm his younger brethren. But there was a truth in his statement.

“And his ass is not half bad,” said Loki.

Gabriel grinned and peered out into the desert wastes of the Dune Sea. Once, eons ago, the place had been an actual sea, teaming with life. Now following some kind of ecological disaster it was a vast scape of restless dunes.

And an occasional traveler.

Gabriel felt into his pocket, rubbing the smooth dragon pearl with his fine-skinned angel fingers.

_“There will be blood,”_ said Loki, tossing the spit behind him and wiping his fingers on his shirt.

_“Brother against brother?”_ asked Gabriel. 

_“It is inevitable.”_

Gabriel looked around him. A few of the Sand People had come over to join their vigil. He gripped tight to the Krayt pearl and scanned the horizon.

Loki was the one who sensed it first. He pointed a finger.

A soft murmur went up among the Sand People. More of them approached the twins, staring across the Dune Sea.

A small dot on the horizon. But it grew. Larger and larger. 

The crowd began to hush. Parents stilled their children. 

The approaching figure grew nearer. A fabulous beast approached across the desert sands: four fine white legs, and two enormous black wings. 

The crowd watching the sands held their breath.

And then the chant went up, ululations from the Tuskens. They stood, howling and waving gaffi sticks, shooting rifles skywards. Two riders approached the camp, mounted on a white horse. As the horse drew near, and finally stilled, the first rider was borne off in triumph, to ride now on the shoulders of the greatest warriors. The other – the winged one – the females gathered around, plying with water and melon juices. Several men tended to the splendid horse.

“Uh. Hi,” said Dean Winchester, when at last he was allowed to dismount from the cheering crowd. 

Gabriel and Loki were hovering over Castiel. He was still winged, and the women of the tribe were carefully preening his wings, using Krayt dragon oils and some of the scarce water supply to do so. 

“Deano!” said Gabriel, slapping the rather bemused human on the back. 

“Grateful for the brother,” added Loki.

“Life debt and all.”

“We owe you too. Collectively, that is. That’s how angels do these things.”

“Oh, uh. That’s nice,” said Dean, who was being handed things now: some of the best bits of the Krayt meat, and an alcoholic drink. 

“I- I think I can put my wings away now,” said Cas, though his voice was a little slurred.

“Not yet, bro,” said Gabriel, crouching down to chat with him. “Not polite. They’re still cleaning you up.”

“He gets antsy,” Loki explained to Dean. “Black feathers thing.”

“We keep telling him it’s a dumb superstition. Oh, and you’ll need this back.” Gabriel dug into his pocket and tossed the Krayt pearl to Dean.

Dean held up the pearl to the light. It was sort of pretty. “What am I gonna do with it? You guys can probably sell it and make some credits.

“To make your lightsaber, dummy,” said Loki.

“I don’t make ‘em for me,” said Dean. “Do I look like a Jedi?”

Gabriel, Loki and Cas all exchanged a glance.

“He doesn’t know?” Loki asked Cas.

Cas blinked and extended a wingtip for a woman to groom. “No, I don’t believe he even suspects.”

“Weird!” said Gabriel. “Humans are weird!”

“What’s the deal?” asked Dean.

“Dean,” said Cas, who was sounding a little more like his old self after some sips of melon juice. “Has it occurred to you that you have abilities as a pilot that are far beyond those of a normal person?”

“I can pilot a ship. So?”

“And tame a horse instantly?” asked Loki.

“And build lightsabers. Duh,” added Gabriel.

“You guys are nuts!” Dean declared, as the light bulb finally clicked on. “Sam is the one you’re talking about! He’s the one in the family with the weird powers.”

Gabriel and Loki were rolling their eyes and snorting. As the Sand People who had been tending to his wings had mostly drifted away, Cas pulled his wings in close and sat up straighter. “Tell me, Dean, why wasn’t Sam allowed to go to the Sith Academy? Specifically, why?”

Dean shrugged. He crouched down next to Cas. “My dad had dreams sometimes. And sometimes, well, they'd come true. He told me he had one about Sam, and it wasn’t exactly cheerful. There was some kind of tournament. And a lot of blood.”

“Prophetic dreams,” said Cas.

“No, he was just superstitious!” said Dean.

“Dean,” said Cas. “The Winchesters obviously display a very rich, inherited connection with the Force. My own family is the same way.”

“Hey, no wings.”

“It doesn’t matter, Dean. If you had been born in the Republic, we would have probably identified you – _both_ of you – at an early age and provided the proper training.”

“And no dancing girls!” smirked Gabriel.

Dean stood up, looking skeptical. “OK, OK, so I got some connection to your mystical Force. Big whoop! But why should I make a lightsaber? I couldn't handle one of those suckers, even if I tried.”

“In my experience, there is no such thing as coincidence,” said Cas. “If the Force guided you to obtain this rare pearl, then my instincts tell me you should use it.”

“I love it when he gets all mystical,” said Loki, and he and Gabriel grinned at one another.

“Loki,” said Cas, standing up a bit unsteadily and stretching out his wings.

“Yeah?”

“Stuff it.”

 

Sam shook his head. He’d been feeling muzzy-headed since he wrestled with the Krayt dragon. Somehow, he knew, a miracle had happened: they had found him, finally, and now he was going to fulfill his destiny at the Sith Academy.

He wanted to tell Dean. Where was Dean, anyway? He seemed to remember him calling out to Sam.

He was following his new Master, Darth Abaddon, the headmaster of the Sith Academy. They had passed by a lot of silent people: beings who stopped what they were doing and bowed their heads as Abaddon entered the room. 

And then at last she exchanged some quiet words with another person. Sam recognized him somehow. Oh, yes! It was Metatron, that annoying Ugnaught who worked for Zachariah the Hutt. Strange that he was one of the few who did not bow before Darth Abaddon. She nodded to him, and then motioned for Sam to follow him.

“I’m going to the Sith Academy now, right?” Sam asked her. He felt like an idiot, but he had to know it was true. After so long, he had to ask.

She smiled at him, and put a tender hand to his face. Her touch was a miracle. “Yes. Yes of course, dear. But first, a few formalities. Nothing to worry about. Metatron will take you. Go with him to the arena.”

“The arena,” Sam repeated dumbly. “Yeah, sure. OK.” He turned and followed Metatron as the little Ugnaught padded down a corridor. Sam silently cursed himself: the very first words he had ever spoken to his new master, and they were “Yeah, sure?” He was as much of a fool as Dean had always claimed.

Where was Dean, anyway?

Sam became aware of a distant noise. It sounded like a crowd. He noticed there were a lot of warriors crowding the corridor now, and wondered about it. Some kind of spectacle? 

They came to a large room: an armory, by the looks of it. “What kind of weapon?” Metatron asked.

“What?”

Metatron shook his head. Sam was sorry for being so thick-headed. “What kinds of weapon do you want to use?”

Sam gazed around. Wow! They had everything here: a dizzying assortment of lightsabers, as well as blasters of every caliber, axes, maces, lances, metal swords, Force pikes…. He could have spent all day here! Too bad Dean wasn’t along. 

Where was Dean? For some reason, the question preyed at his mind.

“We don’t have all day!” Metatron tutted, tapping his hoof.

Sam considered his options. The lightsabers were tempting, but he really couldn’t handle one yet, and didn’t see the logic in pretending, even though one would look awfully cool, clipped to his utility belt. The blaster rifle was really his specialty. It was clumsy, but it felt right in his hands. “Will this be all right?” he asked Metatron, holding it up. It was dumb. He felt like a child.

“Yes, all right. Now come on, come on, we’re holding everything up.” Metatron turned and marched down the corridor, and Sam hurried to keep up. There were more warriors standing around, grimacing and clutching weaponry, and a lot of soldiers bearing Imperial marks on their armor. Lucky Dean wasn't here: Imperials made him nervous.

_Dean._

The corridor ended at a vast, heavy durasteel grating. The crowd noise was growing deafening. Sam peered up between the iron bars and realized that he had been running around underneath some kind of large arena. Ah, that made sense. This was probably a welcoming ceremony for the new students. 

The much-scarred guard standing at the gate sent it cranking up following a gesture from Metatron. “Come on, come on, get to your position!” Metatron nagged.

Sam walked out onto dry, dusty red earth that spanned the field, shielding his eyes from the glaring twin suns. The noise of the gate shutting behind him was muffled by the intense roar of the crowd. The stadium was packed with thousands upon thousands of cheering spectators, dressed in bright-hued clothes, blowing on noise-makers and waving colorful banners. It was almost too much to process. Sam scanned the rows and rows of pavilions. There were not one but two different bands playing music. 

His eyes were drawn up to the very center of the stadium, where the VIP boxes were located.

She was not in the center. That was devoted to Zachariah the Hutt. He sat there now, fat green fingers plucking some kind of frog-like creature from a large jar and devouring it whole. 

She sat in her chair, just off to one side, swanning like the Queen of All.

_Abaddon._

Trying to shake off the last of the haze that had filled his mind, Sam tore his eyes from his new master and glanced around at the others out on the field. His fellow students, he presumed. Twi'leks, Wookiees, Sand People, Rodians. There were a couple of Gamorreans, glaring and carrying their axes. Sam was puzzled. Certainly those guys were too dim-witted to be considered for the Academy? To be honest, the strange assortment of beings could have been a group of bounty hunters. Or, more likely, an assemblage of the galaxy's most wanted. 

_“Welcome, citizens!”_ came the announcement over the PA system. 

The crowd grew louder. 

_“Welcome to the Grand Arena!”_

The ground began to shake as the crowd began to clap and stomp in time.

_“Today, in honor of his greatness, Zachariah the Hutt....”_

The banners waved brightly in the sun.

_“And our Lady, Darth Abaddon, headmaster of the Sith Academy....”_

Up in the VIP box, she smirked.

_“We have assembled a group of the finest warriors in the Outer Rim.”_

Sam blinked in the sun. He was certain the crowd was moments from breaking into a riot.

_“And now, for your entertainment….”_

The crowd howled. 

_“They will battle....”_

The drums rolled.

_“....to the death.”_

Wait. _What the fuck?_

 

“Is it Jedi yet?”

Dean sat hunched over his improvised work bench inside the tent. Through a series of trades with the Jawas they had managed to assemble everything he needed to build a lightsaber. Though for some reason, this one seemed to be taking longer than usual. 

“How ya doin' there, Deano?”

Maybe, just maybe, it was the constant interruptions from Cas's brothers!

Dean looked up at the twins. “I think I need to concentrate, guys. You know, to make all the mystical Force stuff happen?”

Loki and Gabriel grinned at each other. “Aw, bullshit!” said Gabriel.

Dean was getting better at telling them apart. It didn't make them any less annoying however.

“Dean?” And now Cas was here, poking his head into the tent. Well, at least this interruption was a pleasant one. “I hope I'm not interrupting?”

Dean stood up, cracking his back. “Believe me, I need a break.”

“Deano is cracking,” said Loki.

“Well, you guys are such Jedi masters, why don't you build my fucking lightsaber?”

“Hey, touchy!”

Cas was looking a lot better now that he was rehydrated. And his sunburn was peeling a little bit on his nose, which was quite cute. “I- I was going to try and locate your brother now. I wondered if-”

“You'd rather go make out?” ventured Gabe.

“Bite me, Gabriel,” said Cas. 

Dean grinned. He was definitely rubbing off on Cas! He slung an arm around his favorite angel's shoulders – and by favorite angel, he definitely did not mean Loki or Gabe. “Yeah, let's go look for Sammy. You gonna do that Force echolocation thing like your brothers?”

“Yes, although the twins are not adept at picking up the Force traces of items they do not consider of value.” 

Gabe and Loki chuckled, and Dean followed Cas outside the tent. He figured a break would do him good.

The walked to a deserted spot several paces outside the Tusken camp, behind a small rock formation. Cas checked around them and then, with a sigh, doffed his shirt.

“They've already seen your wings, Cas, you dummy,” said Loki, who had positioned himself up on a rock.

“And it's a dumb superstition anyway,” added Gabe, sitting down below his brother, in the shade.

Cas still appeared dubious, but nevertheless, spread out his dark-feathered wings. Dean couldn't help but let out a gasp. Cas glanced over at him. “Does everyone have wings … this big, Cas?”

“You know what big wings means!” Loki laughed.

Cas gave his brother a smiting look, and then settled down on the ground, sitting cross-legged. 

“Dean could help,” Gabriel commented.

“Oh, you mean like Sam helped you guys?” Dean asked.

Cas was staring at him. “I had intended this. Though Dean will be … emotional about it.”

Dean smiled and sat down next to Cas. “Hey, if I'm gonna jump in on this ways of the mystical Force crap, then why not saddle up and start?” 

“That was quite a mixed metaphor, Dean.”

“Bite me,” Dean offered, holding out a hand. 

Cas bit his lip, but finally took Dean's hand in his. Cas spread his wings and shut his eyes, so Dean closed his eyes as well.

“I am going to attempt to follow Sam's Force signature now. You may experience some distress. Don't worry, I will be beside you, to guide you.” As if to emphasize this, Cas squeezed Dean's hand.

And that was all the instruction he gave. Dean sat for a time like this, not quite sure if he was supposed to clear his mind or maybe busy it up, so he finally settled on thinking about Sam.

_Sam...._

Sam was lurching through space, in a poorly guided escape pod. There it went! Dean gasped. He was in the sky, behind it, and he was falling fast.

No! 

Now he had strong arms around him. Cas was there.

OK. All right.

Cas was flying with him.

All right, not going to die yet, Dean decided. Cas had his arms around Dean's waist, and wings extended. He said he couldn't fly, but that wasn't true, they were soaring, following the pod as it bucked and jostled across the desert. Was anybody even piloting the damn thing? 

They were nearing a settlement now. Mos this - Mos that - Mos whatever. A lot bigger than Mos Anek anyway. Some pretty elaborate buildings were clustered near the edge of town. A stadium! Like where they held the pod races. 

There was a great crowd: it looked like the entire city had turned out and poured into the bleachers. Holy shit!

And they were cheering. On their feet triumphant horns blaring the whole city shouting and waving banners and yelling.

The arena was madness. So much blood. So much blood.

Sammy....

“Dean.”

They were cheering for Sam.

“It's all right.”

The whole city.

“Dean!”

All the blood.

“Dean, look at me!”

_“Sammy! No!”_

Dean's eyes snapped open. Cas was on his knees in front of him, staring at him, holding his face, eyes locked. “It's all right. He'll be all right.”

“Sam.” Hot tears came to Dean's eyes. His shoulders slumped, but Cas pulled his face back up again. 

“We'll find him. Somehow. We'll bring him back. I promise. I promise!” Cas dragged him to his feet, and then they were walking back towards the camp. Cas had an arm and a wing wrapped around Dean now, as if to tuck him away from what he'd seen.

Cas bundled him inside the tent. Dean sank to the floor, huddling on top of some bantha skins. “You saw it too, Cas?”

The angel, finally, cast his eyes down. “I saw.”

“He's still Sam. You know he is, Cas. I can sense it. He's still in there.”

Cas was kneeling in front of Dean. His eyes reflected only sorrow. He leaned forward and softly kissed Dean on the forehead. “It will be all right. It will-”

Dean pulled him down and kissed him full on the lips. It was not a soft kiss. 

“You- You need to rest,” Cas whispered, but he didn't move away.

“No.”

Dean leaned forward again.

This time, Cas kissed back.

Dean pressed him downwards, towards the floor. Their bodies tangled together. Cas was wearing nothing but a pair of pants, and it didn't take long to strip those off. Dean wanted to fly. He wanted to touch him, to taste him, everywhere.

Cas was feather soft, and pale as moonlight. “You're so beautiful. Don't let anyone tell you different. So beautiful.” The most wondrous creature Dean had ever touched. So real and warm and so powerful and gentle and cruel and wise. 

Their minds melted together, senses merged as bodies shifted. He sensed everything now, Cas's aches and wants now stripped bare as he was, his gasp of pleasure and pain when Dean entered him, the feeling of being united.

“Beautiful,” Dean whispered, and there were stars behind his eyes, and galaxies inside him.

 

He was sitting on a bench, caked in blood and mud.

The arena had run red that day.

“He won't move,” came a hushed voice. “He just … sits there.”

“What the hell?” fussed Metatron. You really couldn't get decent help these days. “Go. I'll see to him.”

He bustled across the locker room on hurried pig feet. “Sam Winchester.”

“Abaddon.”

The kid hadn't moved. Not even a millimeter. “What.”

“Bring me Abaddon.”

“Yes, well, the Master is busy.”

“Abaddon,” cried Sam, reaching back and slamming Metatron to the wall with a Force push.

Metatron struggled against the invisible power. “I can't- She's busy now.”

Sam rose, slowly. He turned.

Blood was crusted on his face. Blood, running down his armor.

It was not his blood.

He raised one hand, and slowly pressed thumb and forefinger together.

Metatron, pinned to the wall, now felt the life begin to choke out of him.

Sam drew nearer. Metatron wriggled, but the hold did not waver.

“Bring. Me. Abaddon.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Good news and bad news, kiddies. The good news is that I managed to get another chapter up before I left for vacation; the bad news is that this has definitely foofed up into 8 chapters. Sorries, my writing just tends to do that._

_“We'll need a cover story. We can't just barge in, blades humming.”_

_“And you know that's what you wanna do, my brother.”_

There was an awkward pause. _“I know not,o my brothers. The power of the dark side....”_

_“Fuck the dark side!”_

Dean woke to the sound of low voices outside the tent, speaking in a strange, chant-like language. His dreams had been sweet and feather-soft, but now he was alone inside the tent, curled up in a nest of blankets. 

He glimpsed something stuck in the weave of a cover and plucked it out: a small black feather. He smiled fondly. Those broad strong wings. Not to mention, soft lips, luscious thighs, warm and tight, Cas gasping and moaning his name. 

Dean wrapped a blanket around himself and emerged from the tent, blinking in the harsh light of the twin suns. Cas and the twins were sitting around a fire, chatting and drinking coffee. Sadly, Cas’s incredible wings were gone – put away somehow, whatever trick it was they used – and Cas was now wearing clothes. Well, that at least could be remedied.

“Hey, Deano, want some coffee?”

“We shouldn't give him coffee, he ruined our bounty.”

One of the twins gave a now blushing Cas a playful shove in the shoulder. 

“Ya know, I'm just gonna make up nicknames for you guys from now on,” said Dean, pointing to the twins. “I'm gonna call you, asshole, and you, asshole.”

Loki and Gabriel looked at each other and howled with laughter. 

Cas cleared his throat. “We're working on a cover story, Dean.” 

“We gotta go get your dumb brother,” said Gabriel.

“Now that you brought us our dumb brother.”

“You guys in on this?” Dean asked the twins, as he crouched down to fill his coffee cup.

“We'll help out. Like I said, you ruined our bounty,” said Gabriel. He ruffed Cas's hair, which caused Cas to blush furiously once again. For whatever reason, Dean imagined Cas wrapping himself up in his luxurious wings. Tantalizing.

“You … you still want to retrieve your brother?” Cas asked.

“Yeah! Of course!” Dean told him.

The twins exchanged a glance. “Anyway, we gotta get ready to head back to Mos Anek.”

“Oh, and while we're gone....”

“Find some damn pants, Deano.”

“Or not!”

Dean sipped his coffee as the twins padded off to whatever schemes they were up to. He and Cas were silent for a long moment.

“Have you been, uh, making progress with your lightsaber?” Cas asked, sounding not a little bit awkward.

Dean arched a brow. “I could make some off-color jokes here, but the trouble is, I figure knowing you, you wouldn't get any of them. Also, seems like you don't wanna go after my brother?”

Cas stared into the fire.

“C'mon, Cas. Talk to me.”

“From what we saw last night, combined with the rumors which my brothers have been privy to, we believe your brother is currently engaged in a series of trials that will determine his admission to the Sith Academy.”

This threw Dean for a loop. “Wait a minute. The Sith Academy? I thought when we just did that Force thing we saw him being treated like some kind of gladiator?”

“That part is what we've long suspected about the path to the Sith Academy, though up until now it's been shrouded in secrecy. The Sith don't really trust one another. As, to be honest, they should not. They don't train a lot of apprentices, and with the war, they've been losing their adherents. So they've been casting the net far and wide for fit students.”

“But the application form is basically killing all the other guys who want in?”

“In a word, yes.”

Damn, Sammy! It was exactly what the kid had always wanted. But at such a cost? “But why are they making a public spectacle of it? That’s a public arena where they’re fighting, right?”

Cas shrugged his shoulders. For a moment, Dean imagined he could see the angel's wings shrugging as well. “It appears there is a market for such a thing. Recall, Tatooine is technically run not by the Empire, but by the Hutts. They are an organized crime family, and are reputed to obtain much of their wealth-”

“Through gambling.” Dean's heart sunk. “They're all wagering on whether my brother lives or dies.”

“Having seen your brother in action, it's probably more like how many opponents he will slay, or how fast,” said Cas with a wry smile. Dean glared at him, and Cas added, “I'm truly sorry, Dean.” Though he didn't look terribly sorry.

“And you don't think we can get to him?”

There was another round of fire-staring. 

“Dammit, Cas, don't make me go all Jedi mind trick on you!” Cas looked over at him, now with a pained expression. “Tell me.”

Cas drew his knees up and hooked his arms around them. “Dean, your brother is using the dark side of the Force. It's like falling from a cliff: easy to go down, but difficult to climb back up. One finds onself … altered. There is a chance, given that we find him, that he will no longer be the Sam you know.”

“Sam is in there,” said Dean, without hesitation. 

“Once you start down that dark path....”

“Seriously? All you got is Jedi cliches?”

“They're not cliches-”

“What if it was Gabe or Loki we were talking about?”

To Dean's astonishment, Cas broke into laughter. “My brothers are too damned lazy to fall to the dark side.”

Dean had to smile. “But what if, Cas? Seriously?”

Cas scratched his chin. “I would do anything to get them back, I suppose. In fact, I would probably even freeze them in carbonite.”

It was Dean's turn to laugh. The most wonderful, sneaky look had just passed over Cas's face. “We'll get that done at some point.” He put down his coffee cup and stood up. “But right now, I need some help, uh, with my lightsaber.”

Cas looked confused, but took Dean's offered hand. “Really, Dean? May I offer some advice?”

Dean merely grinned and pulled Cas into the tent.

There was silence for a long moment. And then a very flustered, “Oh!”

 

Sam's hair was still wet from the shower. After they had hauled away Metatron, and the first and second group of guys they had sent in here to haul away Metatron, they had finally agreed to take Sam to an immediate audience with Darth Abaddon, in her own private chambers.

“Well, aren't you looking tasty?” she said as he walked in, a tiny smile tugging at the edge of her mouth.

“Formalities,” was all he said. There was no smile.

“Mmm, I can just feel that Dark Side radiating from you.” Abaddon gave a shudder, although she didn't bother to rise from the couch where she sat with her feet propped up on whoever or whatever it was who had come to chat with her earlier. “Oh, sorry about the little mess,” she told Sam. “I did have someone come to haul him away, but I heard you've been playing with my janitors.” She wagged a finger. “That's a naughty, naughty apprentice.”

“I've changed my mind,” said Sam. “About the Sith Academy.”

“I'm so sorry about that, dear, but we can't have that. Not in the contract.”

“I never signed a contract.”

She picked up a candy box that was sitting next to her and picked out a fat chocolate. “I beg to differ. Every corpse you've thrown at my feet? A signature. And you've signed away not only your own destiny to me, but rather a lot of others.”

“I will not follow you.”

Abaddon popped the sweet in her mouth. “Of course you will, dear,” she said around her mouthful. “Now please quit being ridiculous.”

“Abaddon-”

“All right, you win. Bring her in. Hello?” No one answered for a while. “Excuse me.” Abaddon, hopped up off the couch and went to the door. “Where's my chief steward?”

“Strangled him, Ma'am,” came the answer from the other side.

“But I thought you gave me a substitute.”

“Eviscerated.”

“Oh.” She paused and reflected. “Well, silly me. All right, then you go ahead and bring her in. What's your name?”

“Uh, I don't have a name, Ma'am.”

“Oh, I like you. You're good. Come along then!” Abaddon went over and flopped back down on the couch again. After a time, a very big guard came in holding the arm of a small, dark-haired woman.

“Please, let her go,” said Abaddon. The guard obeyed and then backed out of the room a lot more quickly than Sam would have expected someone his size could move. 

“Ruby,” he whispered.

Ruby ignored Sam and looked to Abaddon. “Look, I brought him in. I did everything you asked.”

“Everything and more,” said Abaddon, who had now turned her attentions to peeling an apple from a bowl of fruit with a knife that looked much too big for the task.

“You were working for Abaddon, Ruby?” asked Sam.

She turned to face Sam. “Duh. I got you warmed up to the dark side so the Fearless Leader over here could take her sloppy seconds.”

“You slept with him?” Abaddon asked, curling her lip.

“Damn right. Isn't that what you'd do, Abby?”

Abaddon shook her head and snapped her fingers. Ruby's head jerked suddenly to the left – way over to the left. There was a sharp snap as her spinal cord broke, and Sam was left to catch her as she sank to the floor.

“Yep, that's exactly what I would've done,” said Abaddon. “With infinitely more finesse, however,” she added, pointing the knife. She stuck it in the back of the corpse at her feet and took a chomp of the apple. “So, the first lesson, my young apprentice. See this girl? Now, imagine this happening to someone who actually matters. Why not your terribly good-looking brother?” 

“You- You won't be able to find my brother.”

Abaddon rolled her eyes. “I won't need to, dear. He's obviously going to come riding to your 'rescue' at some point.” She shaped her red-nailed fingers into air quotes. “You boys are such idiots. Now, what shall I do? Tuck him in some nice, safe carbonite and send him on his merry way, or dump him in the Arena with my pet rancor and only three of his favorite four limbs? What will it be?”

Sam didn't answer.

“Silence. That's what I like to hear.”

 

Castiel liked watching Dean work – this was something he was certain about. It was about the confidence of his hands, his concentration.

And, he was forced to admit, he quite enjoyed the sight of Dean’s ass as he bent over the landspeeder’s engine.

“Sand fucking everywhere,” hummed Dean. But he didn’t sound terribly discouraged about it. There was a kind of contentment to him.

“Tatooine is a desert planet,” Cas quietly reminded him. 

They had re-crossed the vast Dune Sea, returned to Mos Anek on bantha-back, and now, while the twins were out on business (securing suitable boarding for Dean’s horse, for one thing, as Dean had grown quite fond of Buddy, but also contacting their sources about what was currently happening with the Trials), Dean was tuning his speeder to make the journey to Mos Espa and, hopefully, the rescue of his brother. 

Cas sat up on the cluttered workbench and watched. He suspected all this fuss and bother over the engine was unnecessary, but divined that it was Dean’s particular form of Jedi battle meditation, a calming before the storm.

“Mmm. Can you make yourself useful, and hand me that hydrospanner?” 

Cas rummaged around in the toolbox beside him and extracted the appropriate piece of equipment, proffering it to Dean. Dean grabbed not the tool, but Cas’s wrist, tugging him closer, enfolding him in what turned out to be a rather long kiss. 

“Thanks, babe,” said Dean with a somewhat greasy grin.

“Dean….”

“What is it?” asked Dean as he went back to the landspeeder engine. “Everything copacetic with my Jedi angel?”

“Dean.” Cas hesitated, but there was nothing to do but plunge ahead. “I’m not entirely certain that I am a Jedi anymore?”

Dean looked up. “What, did you just lose the Force or something? Oh, wait, because of you and me? C’mon, dude, trust me. Jedis have a little fun now and then. And I’ve been with them when they’ve done it!”

“You have had … intercourse with a Jedi knight before?”

Dean stood up and scowled. “Well, yeah. At least, I think so. There’ve been a lot, you know. Pretty sure at least one of ‘em must’ve been a Jedi. Or maybe a Sith. You know. Same difference.”

“Dean! A Jedi knight is quite different from a Sith Lord!”

“Well, I probably have a different perspective on it than you. Anyway….”

“Dean, it isn’t the…. It wasn’t the intercourse. It’s something else. I am not supposed to form attachments.”

Dean was suddenly standing right in front of Cas. It had happened so quickly, it was as if he had teleported. He put his hands on top of Cas’s thighs, tugging his legs apart, and moving in for a long kiss. “You’re attached to me?” he muttered, sounding rather smug about it all.

“I’m not supposed to develop personal attachments, Dean!”

“Aw, you have attachments,” Dean whispered in his ear. “Lots of ‘em!”

It was getting distracting. Dean was very skilled about being distracting. “What are you talking about?”

“Your idiot brothers, for one,” said Dean, pulling back a fraction of an inch. “You obviously love the little bastards to pieces. Otherwise you would have Force pushed their asses out an airlock by now.”

Cas was taken aback by this. He had no answer. Was he simply a bad Jedi?

“I think we’ve been insulted, old bean,” came Loki’s voice. 

“Ugh, you two, get a room!” said Gabriel. The twins had arrived, with a much battered droid rolling along after them.

Dean grinned, reached over and kissed Cas like he meant it. Cas felt his entire body blushing bright red.

“What have you guys been up to?” asked Dean. “Other than no good?”

“Hey, we found a stable for your pet,” said Loki. “And I don’t mean our brother.”

“And regarding your stupid brother, we have some bad news, and some even worse news. But also some good news, because we like being unpredictable.”

Dean grew serious. “Bad news? Is Sammy OK? They haven’t taken him away yet, have they?”

“No, he’s great,” said Gabriel. “That’s the thing, he’s _too_ great. He’s been blowing away the competition.”

“And we mean blowing away. We don’t envy the dudes who have to clean up after him!”

“Show him, Loki.”

Loki pressed a button on the droid. It made a grinding sound, and black smoke wafted out of the top.

“You want me to have a look at that for you?” Dean laughed, wiping his hands on a rag.

“I’ll do it.” Loki fished around in the toolbox, grabbed the biggest hydrospanner, and whacked the droid on the head. It sputtered, and then began projecting a flickering hologram on the floor of the garage. “Percussive maintenance,” he said, crossing his arms.

Everyone crowded around to view. The image looked strangely familiar to Cas: it was the arena he and Dean had seen in their Force vision. The crowd roared, bands played, banners were unfurled. 

“That’s a lot of people,” said Dean, eyeing the crowd. 

Loki futzed around with the droid’s controls, and the camera zoomed in on the crowd. It drifted up to some high boxes and the image froze. “That’s Abba-douche up there,” said Gabriel.

“What, the lizard with the gland condition?” asked Dean.

“That’s Zachariah the Hutt! Next to her!”

“Oh! Thought King Fugly looked familiar.” Dean squinted. “Huh. Well, she’s sorta hot.”

“You mean the chick, not the Hutt?” asked Loki, who added, “Just askin’!” when Dean shot a glare at him.

“What’s that on her neck?” asked Cas, who knelt down beside the projected image.

“A necklace. Duh.”

“There’s something … something about it,” said Cas, who tilted his head, trying to get a better look.

Dean crouched down beside Cas and stared too. “Yeah, it’s … I dunno, creepy.”

“You wanna see creepy, get a load of this,” said Gabriel. Loki had the droid zoom out on the image, for a better view of the field. Entertainers of some sort were dispersing, and there were now some armed individuals being herded onto the field by many, many Imperial troops.

“These look like mercs,” said Dean, pointing to them.

“Yeah,” said Gabriel. “Mercenaries, slaves, bounty hunters – the scum! – and whatever else. You can see they’re awfully enthused about it all.” As the Imperial soldierss retreated back behind the gates from which they had emerged, several of the unlucky sorts out on the field broke and ran towards the gates, obviously trying to flee. They pounded on the iron bars, and tried knocking into them and firing on them with their weaponry, but to no avail.

“Not exactly the galaxy’s finest,” said Dean.

“Wait’ll you see what’s coming.”

Cas felt his heart sink. He sensed what was coming. “I’m not certain you want to witness this, Dean.”

“No. I wanna see.”

Cas reached over and clutched Dean’s hand. He had a sudden urge to pull him away, out of the garage, and away from it all. But Dean gripped his hand and instead sat down on the floor next to the angel. 

The music rose, and the crowd roared. Another warrior emerged onto the field. Cas noticed everyone else gave him a very wide berth. Those who had fled to the gates redoubled their efforts. Some climbed up the sides of the field, only to be knocked back down by guards bearing Force pikes.

And standing in the middle of the field….

“Sammy,” said Dean.

Sam Winchester stood alone in the middle of the field. He paused, and looked up towards Abaddon. He didn’t salute her, or bow, but it seemed that something passed between them. Cas leaned forward. Abaddon, who did not seem a nervous creature, tapped at her necklace. 

_Strange._

And then Sam turned. Some of the warriors on the field had massed together and were approaching him, weapons drawn. Sam paused for a moment, and then brought up a hand, as if he was going to give them a Force push away. He shouted something at them. A few looked doubtful, and a pair of them broke off, but the rest crept closer, surrounding him.

There was a pause. There were some hoots of encouragement from the audience, but nobody moved.

“C’mon, Sammy,” Dean whispered.

And then … movement. Someone had an old-fashioned crossbow, and, perhaps more out of nerves than intent, loosed an arrow.

Sam held up a hand, and the arrow froze in mid-air.

Now the crowd was holding its breath.

Weapons were raised, blasters cocked.

And then what followed was a fusillade, too many shots and shouts and the crowd roaring and men screaming and falling.

When it finally ground to a halt, and the dust cleared, there were bodies – or body parts, to be more accurate – strewn everywhere on the bloody battleground.

And amid it all, standing in the center of the hurricane, as if he hadn’t moved, Sam.

A cheer went up. “Win-ches-ter! Win-ches-ter!”

“Turn it off, Loki,” Cas heard himself saying. The image clicked off.

“We gotta get him out of there!” Dean was still staring where the image had been projected, tears in his eyes.

“Well, that’s the trouble,” said Gabriel. “They’ve got a champion, and from what we can tell, they’re not letting him out of their sight.”

“Can you find us a way in?” Dean asked.

“We can try,” said Gabriel.

“But trouble is, we can't really show our pretty faces in Mos Espa these days,” Loki added.

“After … that thing,” said Gabriel.

“Yeah, after … that thing.”

Cas sighed, and realized he had absolutely no interest in hearing about what thing. 

“But you guys can get us in there?” Dean asked.

“Sure thing!” said Gabriel. “Just saunter on in and snag the most watched, most heavily guarded guy on Tatooine?”

“Or maybe the whole Outer Rim?”

“A snap!”

“Seriously, you two,” scolded Cas.

Gabriel and Loki exchanged a sly glance. “We know a guy!” they chorused.

 

The bell jingled, and the three men ventured down the stairs, into the cluttered junk store. Loki had not accompanied them on this errand because, according to him, “This guy's not hip to the twins thing, and I'm not gonna clue him in.” 

“What a bunch of junk!” said Dean.

“Well, the dude's supposed to be a junk dealer,” Gabriel told him. “What did you expect?”

“Maybe a better class of junk?”

A small, dark-haired human boy came into the shop from a back room. _“May I help you?”_ he inquired in fluent Huttese.

“We need to talk to your boss. Crowley,” Gabriel informed him in Basic.

“I'm Kevin, his assistant,” said the boy, effortlessly shifting languages. “Can I help you?”

“You can go get Crowley, kiddo,” said Gabriel. “And tell him the Trickster says Hi.”

The kid looked dubious, but at length he shrugged and disappeared once again into the back. To pass the time, Dean went to browse the various partially assembled droids. He flicked one on and it began to natter about, “human-cyborg relations,” and how many forms of communication it knew before he managed to power it down again. “Damn annoying,” he muttered. 

“Are you looking for something in particular, Dean?” Cas asked him.

“Something that could monitor Force power would be good,” said Dean, who was rummaging on a shelf covered with various meters and gauges.

“I've never heard of anything like that. There are blood tests for midichlorians-”

“No, not Force sensitivity, I mean when I guy is using it.”

Cas grew thoughtful. “I haven't heard of such a thing before.”

“I might have to put one together. Seems like an obvious thing to have.”

“I can generally sense Force power in my surroundings.”

“But remotely? And remember, not everybody is a Jedi!”

“You're very clever, Dean.”

“For a human?”

Dean and Cas shared a smile. But they were distracted by the sound of an argument in Huttese. _“Please tell your mother to stay out of my business.”_

_“She thinks you're working me too many hours.”_

_“Too many hours? You're my slave, dammit! You're supposed to work too many hours.”_

The small boy came back into the room, followed by a being Dean recognized as a daemon, even though he'd never actually encountered one before. He was roughly human in appearance, small, red-skinned, and supported by a pair of madly fluttering, hummingbird-like wings.

“Crowley!” said Gabriel, who sauntered up the the daemon.

“Not you again!” growled Crowley, switching to a heavily accented Basic. “I told you to never darken my doorway again after that thing the last time.”

“So, I ain't on your doorway, kiddo,” said Gabriel, brushing some items aside and hopping up to seat himself on the front counter. 

Crowley's crimson eyes narrowed. “You realize I could call the local constabulary and have you banished to an Imperial prison planet for the rest of your miserable life.”

“But you won't. You know what side you're toast is buttered on. Also, I brought friends this time. I think you'll wanna meet 'em.”

“You don't have any friends, Trickster.”

“Cas,” said Gabriel, beckoning his brother over. “Show the man.” Castiel doffed his shirt, handing it over to Dean, and then broke out the wings.

Crowley whistled low, and then fluttered around nervously. “Is this real? It can't be!” Dean's heart skipped a beat, as it always did when he saw Cas like this. 

Castiel flexed his wings, careful to show none of his usual hesitancy in displaying his dark feathers. Crowley reached out a hand, but Dean snatched his wrist with a rather possessive glower.

“Uh-uh! No touching the merchandise until we have a deal,” said Gabriel.

“What do you want?” asked Crowley, who was still eyeing Cas's wings.

“If you're gonna black feather someone, we want in.”

“I'm not going to black feather anyone! The thought never even crossed my mind.”

“If you're not planning on black feathering someone,” Kevin asked, “why are you dealing for angel feathers.”

“This man? He's no an angel,” Crowley told Kevin.

“Are you an angel?” Kevin asked Cas.

“Kevin, go to your room!” Crowley ordered.

“You just told me you wanna overwork me!” Kevin protested.

Crowley pointed, and Kevin, with a surly look, finally disappeared into the back room. 

Gamblers were a superstitious lot, and dark angel feathers were thought to be harbingers of ill fortune. Thus, the common practice of gamblers to “black feather” an opponent, that is, plant it somewhere on their person. The feathers were sometimes foisted upon those who wagering against you, but in contests such as races or gladiatorial combat, black feathers were also known to show up suddenly amongst a competitor's effects, often (or so it was believed) with disastrous results. 

The practice was technically illegal, but, of course, so was gambling. 

“Do I get to pluck, then?” asked Crowley.

Cas brought in his wings. “Hey, no touching the merchandise,” growled Dean. 

“Stingy,” said Crowley. “What do you have in mind?” He was now fluttering madly about the room. The market was, of course, saturated with fake angel feathers of varying quality, but there was nothing in the galaxy like the real thing.

Gabriel tilted his head. “I take it you're attending the trials at the Grand Arena.”

“I may. I may see fit to vend some of my poor wares inside the arena.”

“I got some friends who didn't score tickets.” 

“I repeat my suspicions that you haven't any friends, Trickster. And I redouble them that you are now apparently aiding charity cases.”

“My friends … they wanna ride in with you.”

“Well, you certainly don't want much do you?” Crowley fluttered over to Cas and hovered nearby. “So I suppose you have a favored warrior you would like to witness? Someone who's impressed you no doubt with his physicality and gleaming smile?”

“Sam Winchester,” said Dean.

“Ah, the human boy! Sentimentality then, is it?”

“We want him to lose,” said Gabriel.

Crowley's wings suddenly began to flutter like mad. He swooped away from Cas, back behind the counter. “Oh, plot twist! At least this is moderately intriguing. You know of course that he's the most favored to win it all? Said to be _Lord Abaddon's_ favorite as well,” Crowley said, enunciating the name with a pronounced hiss. “And a hit with the young ladies. Well, you'll see the wigs for yourself.”

“Wait. The what?” asked Dean.

“As I said, you will see them. From a distance, I reckon. As for me, I want no part of this nonsense. You are jabbing your fingers into Sith business, whereas I – I am a mere cheat and a coward. Now, depart the premises, or I shall be forced to summon the local gendarmerie.” Crowley made as to flutter to the back room.

“He's not buyin' it,” said Gabriel. “Let's mosey.”

“Just a moment,” said Cas. “You are a daemon, are you not, Crowley?”

Crowley halted and pirouetted. “Ah, as sharp as you are pretty, aren't we, my Diathim friend? Yes, I am indeed a daemon.”

“And your kind is, I believe, native to Korriban?”

“That is the reason for the accent, yes. Now, you were on your way out, weren't you?”

“I'd like to show you something,” said Cas, pushing a button on his wristband. The flickering image of Abaddon, sitting up in the stands at the Arena, appeared.

Crowley suddenly stilled. He glowered, and his voice, suddenly, lowered. “The usurper.”

“That Sith Academy is off on Korriban, isn't it?” said Dean. He actually knew this quite well: Sam used to talk about nothing else.

“No great loss. Nothing there but rocks,” muttered Crowley.

“But it was your home world?” Dean asked.

Crowley didn't answer, but for the first time, he looked genuinely dangerous.

“I was wondering about her necklace,” Cas continued, zooming in on Abaddon's image. “This amulet she's wearing – isn't the design something from Korriban?”

Curious, Crowley flew closer and leaned in towards the hologram. “I believe … I believe you are right, angel. Kevin!” he bellowed. “Where has that boy gotten to?”

“I thought you told me to get to my room?” said Kevin as he once again emerged from the back room.

“Yes, but you never follow my orders. Fetch me that book on Sith imagery.” Kevin rolled his eyes dramatically, but departed, evidently in search of the book.

“Cassie,” said Gabriel, “believe me, we can't trust this guy.” But Castiel stubbornly shook his head and Dean suddenly wondered why Gabriel was suddenly so hesitant about this, his own plan.

Kevin returned shortly, bearing a book that was almost as large as himself. Crowley slammed it down on the counter, which (this being Tatooine) raised a cloud of dust. Gabriel sneezed. Crowley leafed through a few pages, waving at Cas to bring the holographic image nearer to him. “Yes, see here?” he asked as everyone gathered around. Crowley put a red finger on an image. “Resembles a talisman made during the 100 years of darkness.”

“What? Didn't they have enough Sith to screw in a light bulb?” asked Gabriel.

“Not of only two there are,” said Cas. 

“It's something from one of the Sith alchemists. They loved fussing about with spells in those days,” said Crowley. 

“So, what the hell is it, exactly?” asked Dean.

Crowley was rubbing his chin. “It just might be … the nexus of her power.”

 

“Is there anything that you need, dear?”

Sam said nothing. He felt nothing. There was nothing that he needed, nothing that he wanted.

He just wanted away from the blood.

It seemed like he'd been here forever, killing things. After a while, the anger began to feed on itself. Was this what the dark side was like?

“Nothing at all?” prodded Abaddon.

And then she tapped the amulet she was wearing around her neck. Tap-tap. Sam tilted his head and stared at it. He couldn't remember seeing her with it before. It seemed to make her.... Well, not nervous. To be honest, he couldn't imagine the Sith Lord nervous. But she seemed oddly attentive to it.

“I want your necklace.” He wasn't quite certain why he said it – she had already turned to go. 

Abaddon stopped. She turned back, smiling widely.

She leaned over to where he was sitting, catching his face in her hand. “Is it this you want, my dear? I'll tell you what: do your job today, and it's yours!”

And then she turned on her heel and strode off.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All rightie, we're back from Disney World, and I'm gonna finish this thing. Here's the penultimate chapter! (And, yes, I say words like penultimate.)

The new day dawned clear and cold.

Cas shivered, wishing he had his wings out to gather around himself – and perhaps wrap around Dean, to shield him from this madness. The cold usually did not affect Diathim as much as humans, but there was something else, something _elusive_ that was preying on the edge of Cas's mind.

Plans to rescue Sam Winchester had been formulated: plans Cas was not at all enthusiastic about. To that end, Crowley was poking around in a vast, drafty hangar, Dean hot on his heels. “I'm certain it was here somewhere,” muttered the daemon, fluttering his thin, red-veined wings furiously while he and Dean threw aside a number of dusty, cobweb-shrouded tarps, only to reveal half-disassembled starship engines or yet another junked landspeeder. 

Cas did not trust Crowley on instinct. The daemons were the progenitors of the Sith, even if the original inhabitants of the planet Korriban were a conquered people. And it did nothing to ease Cas's mind that Gabriel and Loki had abruptly lit off for parts unknown with only the vaguest of explanations. The twins were always scheming, but this departure had left Dean and Cas alone in the company of Crowley and his cynical human assistant, Kevin. 

“It's not really Crowley’s anyway,” Kevin was confiding to Cas. “Some kid left it here a few years ago, and never came back for it.”

Cas puzzled over the statement. “Kevin, excuse my forwardness, but exactly how old are you?”

Before Kevin could answer, however, there was a commotion as a large tarp was thrown back, raising up a cloud of reddish Tatooine dust. “Wow!” Dean exclaimed.

“Wow,” echoed Cas, albeit with an entirely different meaning.

“I've never seen one up close like this!” said Dean, in reference to the utterly unspeakable piece of machinery Dean and Crowley had just unearthed. It somewhat resembled a podracer. There were two great, rust-speckled turbine engines connected by cables to a sort of low-slung pilot vehicle. Dean immediately hopped into the driver's seat and set to fiddling with various knobs.

“What a hunk of junk,” Cas found himself saying. 

“For the thousandth time,” Crowley grumbled, “the intent is not to transform your acquaintance into the next podracing champion! We have only to run this vehicle in the parade tomorrow morning, and thence past the gates to obtain entrance to the Grand Arena, and thus locate Dean's younger sibling, and perhaps liberate a rather lovely artifact, which was cruelly stolen from my people.”

“And which you will then sell on the black market,” Cas added.

“One has to pay the bills somehow, angel,” tutted Crowley, who did not contradict Cas. “We are not all so fortunate as to be birthed into the royal family.”

Cas scowled. How much had Gabriel told Crowley about their past, and how much had he guessed?

There was a noise much like a giant fart, and the accompanying acrid smell as black smoke belched from the racer. “It still runs great!” hollered Dean over the clatter of the rumbling, grumbling jet engines. “Just needs a little tune up!”

“Kevin, fetch the tool box,” barked Crowley. 

“What tool box?” Kevin grumbled. 

“There must be on somewhere. I can't be expected to do everything, now can I?”

“I saw one on a shelf back there,” Cas supplied. He turned to go retrieve it, as Crowley berated Kevin for his uselessness, and Kevin gave Crowley the what for. 

“Thanks, babe!” said Dean as Cas set the heavy toolbox down on the grease-stained floor beside him. Cas blushed and glanced at Crowley and Kevin, hoping they hadn’t noticed the term of endearment, but the pair were still quarreling as they made their way out of the warehouse. “We're in luck!” Dean told Cas. “I think all this needs is some basic maintenance and I'll have it purring like a kitten.”

“Do you like cats?” asked Cas, who was still halfway distracted.

“Not as much as I like my angel,” said Dean, who suddenly grabbed Cas by the waist and pulled him nearer. “Maybe after I work on this engine, we could grab a little private time, you know, get the wings out?” he whispered.

“You find my wings attractive?” asked Cas, who was still feeling rather moody.

“Oh, fuck yeah. Why?”

“They are considered as sexual signals among my people. Those with more impressive wings are highly sought after as mates.”

Dean spread his arms out at his sides, wiggling his fingers. “Oh, so I must look like a really crap angel, huh? No wings!”

Cas blinked in shock. “You are a very attractive human, Dean!”

Dean grinned, which only made him even more attractive. He pulled Cas in close, slipping his hands under his waistband, rubbing his thumbs along Cas's hipbones. “So, why don't you have a ton of angel boys and girls hanging off of you, hmm? Your wings are pretty great.” He followed up this comment with a small kiss.

“I've told you, Dean. I am a black feather.”

“If other angels don't like you – there's only one explanation. They're dicks!” Dean did have a way of simplifying matters. He gave Cas a little push, holding him at arm's length. “Now, you gonna tell me what's _really_ on your mind? You've been sulking, dude.”

Cas found he liked sulking. “Isn’t it obvious? My brothers have departed, and we are now working with a daemon.”

“Yeah? That all seems fine to me.”

This took Cas aback, to say the least. “How could you say that?”

Dean picked up a hydrospanner and flipped it. He pointed it at Cas. “Your brothers are unpredictable. Crowley I _know_ I can't trust! Now, let's get this motor running.”

Cas wasn't so sanguine. “I feel you should be training with your new lightsaber, and not spending so much time on vehicle mechanics.”

“The plan, remember? I gotta enter the podrace!”

“Dean, you realize in order for Crowley's plan to work, you will not only have to tune the engine: we will also need someone to pilot the pod racer, at least in order to ride it into the stadium?”

Dean stood back and crossed his arms, his expression the picture of smugness. “Sure thing. We got me.”

“You believe you can pilot this?”

“No sweat!”

“You have done so on previous occasions?”

“Naw. But I've watched a shitload of podraces in my time.”

Cas sighed. “But even then, Dean, assuming we manage to arrive at the stadium still in one piece, Abaddon and her Sith allies will almost certainly be lying in wait for us.”

“But that's the beauty of this plan, Cas! Like Crowley explained-”

“And you believed him?” Cas interjected.

“-the Hutts are in charge here, not the Empire, and gambling is their deal. There's no way they'd let _anyone_ , including Abaddon and her goons, fuck with their podrace. We'll be the safest guys on Tatooine!”

“I have a bad feeling about this,” Cas persisted. 

“C’mon, Cas, help me out here! You gotta be my pit crew!”

Cas appeared scandalized. “Pit crew? Dean, I am a Jedi knight!”

“Oh, you’re gonna be fussy, angel?”

This further scandalized Cas. “I am not fussy, Dean.”

“Then let’s get to it, pit crew!” Dean told him, slapping the hydrospanner into his hand and whipping off the the tarp 

 

“Seriously?” said Dean. 

He had spotted something in the crowd as they slowly made their way through the heinously clogged streets of Mos Espa. Dean and Cas were situated in the podracer, although it was a little cramped with two of them. Crowley’s bulky landspeeder van slowly trundled its way along behind. When Dean had heard the word “parade” he had imagined that they would at least have the right of way to the Arena, but that, alas, was nowhere near the truth, and they were now proceeding slower than even the least agile pedestrians. They had just been passed by yet another gaggle of creatures fitted with rather terrible hairpieces waiting along the parade route.

Driving the podracer was not as much of a disaster as Cas had feared, although the electrical coupling between the twin pods turned out to be a bit dodgy. The angel was keeping an eye on it, as they had found out when it failed, the racer tended to veer suddenly of into circles as if it were chasing its own tail. There had been no permanent damage, fortunately, though Dean was forced to bail out of the driver’s seat and empty the contents of his stomach onto the stretch of salt flats they had been using as a test track.

“Should've thought to invest in some of the wig trade,” muttered Crowley, his voice crackling over the communicator.

“Is that supposed to be Sammy's hair?” asked Dean.

“Apparently it is found by some to be attractive,” said Cas, frowning at a male Twi'lek sporting a nest of chestnut-colored hair stuck over its head tentacles.

“Attractive? It just makes every species look like it needs a damned haircut!”

“I think your brother has a fan club,” laughed Kevin, who was out walking beside the podracer and (to Crowley’s evident dismay) having the time of his life today.

“Will you all shut up and pay attention to the roadway? We're getting near,” said Crowley as the little convoy slowly approached the gates of the Grand Arena. They passed a group of street musicians playing oom-pa-pa music, and another cranking out mellow jazz.

“At this rate, it’s gonna be a week,” snarked Dean as Crowley hushed him. 

Dean had attended a podrace or two in his day, but had only been able to watch the events by hiding out around the track to catch a glimpse. On the other hand, he had never seen a need to view gladiatorial combat. As his father had opined, why watch amateurs in their crude attempts at the family business? 

But it was nearly impossible not to feel the thrum of excitement as they drew nearer to the Grand Arena. It seemed the entire city was turning out today, and all traffic lanes – which even on a good day were nearly impassable what with all the farmers ambling across the road with their herd of dumb pack animals – were jammed with landspeeders and swoop bikes and transports and rontos and banthas alongside great gaggles of pedestrians of all species, all making their way to the same central location for what had been announced as the final round of the trials. 

Adding to the general chaos were vendors who wove in and out of the slow-moving vehicles, padding the dusty pavement selling hats and banners and posters and noise-makers and various tasty snacks. To Crowley’s disgust, Dean had beckoned over a girl bearing a selection of pallies, and bought a bag for him and Cas and Kevin to munch on while the podracer inched its way towards its destination. 

Much to Crowley’s disgust and Cas’s dismay, instead of focusing on driving the podracer, Dean had been up staring out at the crowd most of the morning. He had been shocked to discover that some banners and posters for sale contained crude images of his brother. Evidently Sam had already developed a devoted following in the games. The Sam Winchester wigs were just the cherry on top. When he spotted a vendor selling some rather crude examples, he had actually jumped out of the podracer to go purchase one. “Here, you take the wheel,” he told Cas. It took all of the angel’s Jedi training not to panic as he suddenly found himself at the helm of a vehicle that could break the sound barrier with barely a touch to the throttle. 

“That was idiotic,” Crowley barked over the communicator when Dean climbed back into the cockpit. Dean imagined the daemon's thin wings beating on the chair seat in agitation.

“Aw, Cas was fine,” said Dean, slapping the wig onto a quite befuddled Cas.

“No, I mean you didn’t even bother to bargain!” yelled Crowley. “Anyway, I could make a much better one. And for cheaper. Oh, we’re there, you two, pay attention up there.”

Cas tossed the wig back and Dean wriggled around Cas to take the driver’s position again. They had finally arrived at the gates of the Grand Arena. A pair of huge guards stood guard there on either side, and Dean could see more soldiers gathered around, armed with blasters and Force pikes. Crowley pulled up alongside the racer at the gate and stopped, hopping out of the van to hover. “Just a harmless old man and my son, here to provide support for our podracer,” he told the stern-looking guard.

“Your 'son' isn't even the same species,” remarked the guard.

“Oh, please don't mention his hideous deformity,” Crowley pleaded, encircling the squirming Kevin in a hug.

“Badges,” demanded the guard as the guard on the other side held up and cocked his blaster.

Crowley quickly proffered the one he'd just whipped up that morning, while smiling a smile that was apparently supposed to appear innocent, but actually looked fishy as hell. 

The guard scowled at the badge for a moment too long. The other guard had a big finger on the trigger.

_“This badge is acceptable,”_ whispered Cas, surreptitiously waving a hand at the guard. Dean held his breath.

“This badge is acceptable!” barked the guard. The second guard looked confused, but lowered his weapon.

_“Go on through,”_ whispered Cas.

“Go on through! Go on!” the guard urged, waving his hand in an agitated manner.

Crowley hopped back into the speeder and hit the accelerator. “As I told you, it would be no problem gaining entrance,” came his voice. 

Dean looked over at Cas and grinned. “Jedi mind tricks – fuck yeah!” 

The service parking lot in back of the Arena was pure chaos, the podracers and their pit crews mixed in with vendors and performers and troupes of musicians. It looked like a circus had come to town, with exotic animals of every breed trotting and slithering and gliding through, and brightly costumed acrobats practicing cartwheels. They parked their respective vehicles and stood in the lot to talk.

“What time is Sam supposed to appear?” Dean asked Crowley. 

Crowley seemed distracted, his eyes roving around at everyone and everything. “Not until the early evening, following the podrace.”

“I don’t understand,” said Cas, who stepped aside to let pair of rontos lumber past in front of them. 

“You wouldn’t,” sniffed Crowley, who shuffled to avoid a passing swoop bike. “It’s all about spectacle here. Keep the masses entertained. And speaking of which-” He nodded towards a group of shifty-looking creatures all huddled in a circle just outside the building. Dean was certain if he'd still had checked the Most Wanted files there would have been at least two or three of them who showed up on the top ten list. There were a couple of Hutts among their number, slobbering and counting their money. “I need to consult with my associates,” Crowley added, rubbing his hands together.

“Remember,” said Dean, who grabbed Crowley by one wing and pulled him in close. “You got those black feathers for a reason.” 

“Yes, yes, I shall have a black feather planted on Mr. Perfect Hair. Now I must dash.” Crowley began madly fluttering away.

“Podracers to the holding area,” a bulky race official holding a clipboard barked at Dean.

“I’m, uh, having issues with the energy binders,” Dean told him. “Do you have somewhere I could take her?”

The official pointed to a doorway, and Dean piloted the podracer into a vast, noisy hangar, where several of the racers were performing last-minute maintenance on their vehicles. Dean found a parking space for the podracer, and then, to Cas’s great annoyance, stopped in front of another racer, where several pit droids were manically producing a shower of red sparks. “That turns into a saw, so they can clip off other racers’s fins,” Dean explained while Cas scowled. “I bet ours could beat them on speed. I’ve got a lot more horsepower. But I didn’t think about offensive weaponry.”

“Dean, might I point out, the objective here today is not podracing, nor is it gladiatorial combat, but rather to find your brother.”

“Yeah, of course, Cas, but imagine it! Sammy is a famous gladiator, and I’d be a famous podracer!” Dean smiled, appearing starry-eyed at the prospect.

“A Jedi does not crave fame!”

“Well, then it’s lucky I ain’t a Jedi.”

“Dean-“

“Cas, to be honest, I’m not even sure Sammy wants to be ‘rescued,” Dean went on, pointing to a couple of passers-by wearing madly inappropriate Sam Winchester wigs. “He might be digging all this attention, drinking it up. I mean, he always wanted to be part of something bigger. Ever since he was a kid!”

 

“Come on,” said Metatron. “It's almost time.”

Someone prodded him with a Force pike, and Sam reluctantly stood up and made his way back down the corridor, back towards his cell. Even though he had Abaddon's threats against Dean and his friends hanging over his head, they still didn't let him go anywhere without a whole retinue of armed guys surrounding him: for his protection, or so Metatron claimed. He knew from looking up into the stands the last couple of days that there were now placards and banners with his picture on them. They liked the spectacle. But they _loved_ the blood.

People were pretty horrible, really.

He was lost in thought, shambling down the corridor, eyes fixed on the floor, so he didn't really notice when they got to the more narrow part, and it barely registered when one of the slaves running back and forth lurched over and bumped into him. It was a dark-haired kid. He said something in Huttese that sounded like an apology, and then was hustled along. There was a lot of shoving and grumbling among his retinue, and then they pushed him into his cell and the door shut with a clang.

Sam remained standing there for some time, until he heard footsteps retreating, and the voices muted. And then, when he thought he was alone, he opened his hand and put it up to the light to reveal what it was that he'd shoved into it when the slave had lurched into him. He'd thought perhaps it was a message. Maybe it was.

It was a feather. An angel feather, to be specific. So dark black it was nearly blue. 

Sam held his hand up – far up. The light played on the fine ridges.

For the first time in days, he felt something.

_Hope._

 

Trying to look as if they actually had some idea where they were going, Dean and Cas ambled through one of the corridors leading down towards the labyrinthine lower levels of the Grand Arena. They slipped away from the crowd and hid out of sight in an empty passageway.

“Which way now?” Dean asked. 

“I thought the Force would guide us,” Cas confessed, “but I’m not picking up Sam’s location. Perhaps there are too many Force-sensitive beings in the area.”

Dean pulled a small object out of his pocket and opened it. It was a pack of death sticks. He lit one up. “What is that?” asked Cas as Dean blew a puff of smoke.

“Oh, you’re not gonna give me grief over a little smoking, are you? Crowley deals in these things, and he gave me a carton.”

“Yet another reason to dislike them,” said Cas, snatching the smoke from Dean’s grasp.

“Hey!”

“You would like to ingest this?” To Dean’s astonishment, Cas took a rather extended drag on the smoke, and then yanked Dean towards him, crushing their lips together. After a moment, he broke the clench. Dean stumbled back a pace or two, and blew out a stream of smoke. “Whoa.”

Cas dropped the death stick and crushed it under his boot. “There is a time and a place for everything,” he stated. 

“I’m hoping the time and place is soon and near,” said Dean.

_“Psst!”_

Dean and Cas turned around to see Crowley's slave, suddenly standing there. Evidently he had been following them.

“Uh, yeah? Kevin, right?” said Dean.

“Jedi. Right?”

Dean and Cas exchanged a glance.

The boy stood in the middle of the corridor, feet planted, arms crossed. “Aw, come on. I'm not an idiot.”

Dean shrugged. “All right, kid, so what if we are Jedi?”

“Take me with you.”

“What, right now?”

Kevin huffed in frustration. “When you go. I want off this rock!”

“I'm afraid you're a little too old for Jedi training, Kevin,” said Cas. “And I don't sense-”

“I'm not strong with the Force. Fuck that noise. But you guys must have jobs for translators, librarians, that sort of stuff, right?”

Cas was looking him up and down. “So, why are we doin' you a favor, kid?” Dean asked.

“My dad was a gambler. The dumbass got in over his head, and ended up getting my whole family sold into slavery by the Hutts. While he was enslaved, he was on the construction crew that built this place. And then they killed them all off afterwards, so nobody would know the secrets.”

“I'm sorry,” said Dean.

Kevin looked up and down the corridor. And then he bumped a piece of masonry with his elbow.

There was a creek, and a secret door opened up in the wall. “Don't be sorry. My dad was a jerk. But he knew every in and out of the Arena. Now, do we have a deal?”

Dean raised his eyebrows. Cas shrugged. “OK,” said Dean.

“Where did you guys _really_ want to go?”

“Like we said, we wanna see Sam Winchester,” said Dean. “We're, uh, real big fans.”

Kevin blanched. “Are you nuts?”

Dean and Cas looked at one another. “We have something for him. A present. He’s gonna need it for the trials.” Dean made towards the opened door.

Kevin moved to block their way. “Me and my mom. Both. You want me to bring you to Wig Boy, then we're a package deal.”

Dean and Cas exchanged another glance. “Your mother is the person Mr. Crowley was speaking about?” Cas asked. 

Kevin grinned. “Yeah.”

“Sounds good,” said Dean.

Kevin glowered. “I'm still an idiot for doing this.”

“Probably!” Dean encouraged.

And then the three of them disappeared into the hidden door.

 

“Which way did he say again?” Dean asked.

“Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, ” said Cas. They were standing in a dark, deserted corridor so far underneath the arena they could no longer hear the crowd noises. Despite their bargain, Kevin had abandoned them before they had actually reached Sam's cell, albeit with a list of very specific directions.

“Didn't we do that?” asked Dean, counting down the twists and turns on his fingers.

“I think we went left when we should have gone right.”

“First right or second right?”

“Yes, right.”

“Right or left?”

“Did you hear that?”

Dean shook his head. They stood in silence for a moment, and then Cas beckoned him down the hallway. They approached an especially dark, suspicious-looking corner, and Cas carefully peeked around. 

He immediately ducked his head back, pressing himself back against the wall.

“What?” whispered Dean. He carefully peeked around the corner himself, and would have gasped in surprise had Cas not slapped a hand over his mouth and yanked him back.

There was a huge underground room, and it was practically filled with ranks upon ranks of Imperial soldiers. 

“Shit,” Dean mouthed to Cas, who appeared to agree. 

“Probably Abaddon's entourage,” Cas whispered as they backed away from the room.

“She travels in style!”

“We need to get-” But then they both flattened themselves on the wall as they heard marching footsteps approaching. Cas reached out with the Force, causing a rustling noise in back of the approaching contingent of Imperial soldiers. As the troopers stopped to investigate, Cas and Dean broke to run in the opposite direction.

They didn't get far.

 

Up on a raised dais at one end of the Arena, Sam squinted in the sunlight, raising an arm up over his eyes to block the harsh glare of Tatooine's relentless suns. His days were now composed of the silent darkness of his small cell, broken by intermittent forays out in the blood and sand of the arena.

The roar of the crowd was deafening, as the mob was now hyped up from the morning’s entertainment. Two different bands at distant ends of the stadium played competing fanfares and people in the audience blew on horn-like noisemakers. A combination of slaves and droids was hurriedly clearing the field from the last bit of entertainment which, from the twisted, ruined hulks spread across the field, appeared to have been some kind of podracer demolition derby, maybe with explosives. Sam was a little saddened that he hadn't been let out to witness it. Dean would have enjoyed it. 

_Dean._

He carried the dark feather in his pocket. He reached down to touch it. 

They hadn't given him anything but a blaster that first time, so over the last few days, he had patched together bits of armor and weapons from other fallen warriors. They had let him wear the armor today, but for armaments had allowed him only a lightsaber. It was a deadly weapon in the hands of a skilled Jedi or Sith, but for someone like Sam, it was more like handing him a butter knife to cut through durasteel. 

Now that Sam's vision was clearing, he could see there was another dais down at the other end of the arena. But it was curtained off. What lay behind the curtain? Today’s opponents, perhaps? 

There were also clusters of guards fussing around three large metal gates that led to the arena from the labyrinthine corridors underground. Usually this was where the Sith potentials entered the arena, but they were closed today.

_“Greetings, citizens!”_ bleated the amplified voice coming over the PA system. The crowd quieted, but only a little. Sam knew they were here for blood. _“Are you ready for a rrrrrumble?”_

Yes, evidently, they were.

_“Welcome to the Trials, in honor of our Lord, Zachariah the Hutt! And our special guest, the Lady Abaddon! Boom-chikka-wow!”_

The crowd roared its approval.

_“In this corner, our returning champion, Sam Winchester!”_ The audience went wild again. Sam rolled his eyes.

_“Today, we have something a little unique…”_

“Can’t wait,” muttered Sam.

_“…as our potential Sith Academy enrollee takes on an acklay, a reek and a nexu!”_

“Did they already run out of Sith Lords?” Sam grumbled. He searched his mind, trying to remember what the hell those creatures might look like. He imagined claws, and lots of pointy teeth.

_“And just to make things interesting, he'll be fighting them for a very special prize!”_ There was motion now over at the dais at the other end of the field, and Sam watched as some slaves ran out now and pulled back the drapes.

Two figures were chained to duracrete pillars there.

Two very familiar figures.

“Dean?”

Dean looked around, blinking in the sunlight. Beside him, the angel Cas hung from his chains, limp and unmoving. 

There was a grinding of gears as doors opened around the perimeter of the arena. Great metal gates raised up, and a trio of fierce creatures were loosed into the arena. There was a huge, spindly, spidery acklay; a fierce huffing, snorting, three-pronged reek; and a brindle-furred nexu. 

And they were now only a few yards away from where Dean and Cas were chained up, utterly helpless.

“Dean!” screamed Sam, who began to run as fast as he could towards the other end of the arena. 

The nexu was the first to catch scent of prey, and the cat-like animal began to pad towards the chained men. It prowled towards Dean, sniffing the air.

“Uh, hey kitty,” said Dean.

The nexu reared back, opening its razor-toothed jaws.

“Nice kitty?” said Dean.

The nexu yowled as Sam sent it reeling with a great Force push.

“Hey, Sammy,” said Dean, casually as he could, while Sam stood, panting, next to his brother.

“What the fuck, Dean? What the fuck?”

Dean grinned. “We're rescuing you!”

“What?”

The giant, spindly acklay had crept nearer, poised on its six pointed crab-legs, looming over them. Sam turned, ignited his lightsaber, and awkwardly gave it a poke one razor-sharp pointed foot. It hissed and retreated.

Sam turned back to Dean. “Has it occurred to you that this is the worst rescue in the history of rescues?” 

“Hey, give us some credit.”

“I’ll get you out somehow, and then you guys get away. Without me.”

“Wait – what?”

But Sam’s reply was interrupted by the acklay creeping over once again. Once again, Sam awkwardly hefted the lightsaber and, with apparent effort, gave the creature a whack in one of its pointed feet. “Fucking lightsaber,” he grumbled.

“Sam, what’s the deal?”

“I’m not _me_ any more,” said Sam. “I don’t know what I am.”

“Of course you’re you! Duh! Tell him, Cas!” urged Dean. Cas didn’t respond, but remained hanging from his chains. “See, Cas agrees!”

The acklay poked again, and Sam poked back, though this time he overbalanced with the lightsaber and nearly ended up cutting off his own arm. “God dammit!”

“Get me out of these, and I'll give you a hand,” Dean called, rattling his chains.

Of course, the bull-like reek chose this moment to charge. Sam fished a lockpick out of a pocket and threw it somewhere in Dean's vicinity while Sam tangled with the reek.

“Oops!” said Dean, gazing at the pick on the ground nearby. “A little closer maybe?”

“Use the Force!” Sam hollered back.

“Oh, good idea,” said Dean. He closed his eyes, stuck out his hand, and concentrated.

“What the fuck do you think you're doing, Dean?” Sam called back over his shoulder.

Suddenly the lock pick flew up from the ground and nestled in Dean's hand. “Hey, neato!' said Dean.

Sam was so taken aback he was nearly run down by the reek. “How the hell did you do that?”

“Gettin' Jedi lessons,” said Dean.

“And what's happened to him?” Sam asked of Cas.

“Oh, we had a little dustup with some Imperials, and he might have gotten a knock on the head,” said Dean, who had just managed to unlock his chains. “Hey, reek dude, neener neener!” The reek charged, and, like a graceful bullfighter, Dean side-stepped at the last minute. The beast smashed into the duracrete pillar, stunning itself, and putting a wide crack that ran through the pillar.

“Can you wake him up?” Sam called, pointing to Cas as the spindly aklay was now looming over him again.

“Hey! Wake up, Cas!” yelled Dean. 

Suddenly, Cas jerked awake. He stared at Dean for a moment.

“Need help with those chains, buddy?” asked Dean. 

Cas closed his eyes. There was a crunch of metal, and the chains fell away.

“Guess not.”

Then Cas stepped back and stuck out his hand towards the cracked duracrete pillar Dean had been chained to. There was a great cracking noise. Cas swept his arm around, and the pillar toppled over, landing smack on top of the acklay.

“Crabby patties,” said Dean. “All right: reek down, acklay down. Is that all of them?”

As if in answer, the nexu chose this moment to wake up from its Force-induced stupor and leap at Sam, yowling and extending its claws. Sam cringed, but Cas stuck out a hand and stopped it in its tracks. And then, keeping his hand up, he slowly crept towards the quivering creature. It yowled again, and he set a hand on its furry head.

A dull rumble arose in its chest. It closed its eyes, and Cas scratched it behind its ears.

“I like cats,” he explained as the ridiculous thing purred and rubbed against him.

“Yeah, great. Kitty cat is sleeping on your side of the bed,” Dean grumbled.

“Wait,” said Sam, as realization hit him. “Dean, you didn't!”

“Dean I did,” said Dean, with a big grin.

“I'm in-laws with a Jedi now? This is gonna look great on my Sith Academy application.”

“You still wanna go to the fucking Sith Academy? After all this shit?” Dean asked, waving a hand around the arena.

“Well, there's not much of a market for guys with dark side powers out there,” Sam sighed. 

“They're making an announcement!” Cas told them. He was still petting the stupid nexu, which was literally batting its four bloodshot eyes at him now. Maybe he really did like cats?

_“Now, as the final test...”_ the announcer began.

“Grand finale, can't wait,” said Dean. “Do we get popcorn?”

“No we don't get popcorn, jerk,” grumbled Sam.

“Bitch,” sassed Dean.

“Will I too receive a clever nickname?” asked Cas.

_“And in honor of the mighty Lord Zachariah the Hutt....”_

“Boo!” said Dean.

_“And our Lord Abaddon....”_

The nexu growled, and so did Cas.

_“Release the rancor!”_

The three looked at one another. “Shit!” said Dean, which just about summed it up. There was a grinding of gears that needed oil as the biggest, heaviest durasteel gate was slowly opened. A huge, reptilian creature, so big it had to stoop to pass below the huge gate, emerged and snapped jaws wide enough to engulf a bantha. Several guards carrying Force pikes ran to the gate to goad the monster along, and at least one of them got snapped up and eaten whole for his trouble. 

The creature paused to lick blood from its cracked and terrible lips.

“How do you get yourself into this stuff, Sammy?” asked Dean.

“We will all need to work together,” said Cas.

Sam turned to him. “All they gave me is this lighsaber, and I'm-” He paused as it flew out of his hand and into Cas's. 

“That will do,” said Cas, swishing the blade around in a satisfied manner while Sam darkly muttered, _“Show off”_ under his breath. “Dean?” said Cas.

Dean pulled out something and tossed it to Sam, who frowned. “What is this? Another saber?”

“I made it!” said Dean. “I used that Krayt dragon pearl to dampen the gyroscopic effect. Try it out!”

Sam ignited it and swished it around. His eyes grew big. “Dean. This is... This is....”

“Awesome!” Dean supplied, hands on hips, smug expression spreading on his face.

Sam rolled his eyes, but his grin said everything.

“Come on, Sam,” said Cas, and they both approached the huge rancor beast, which had caught their scent and was now headed their way. “Their hide is quite tough – it's difficult even for lightsabers to pierce it. We will need to move with caution.”

“Do they have weak spots?” asked Dean. “Anything?”

“The Achilles tendons might be vulnerable. If we could distract it....”

The hulking beast was so large and so weighty that the ground literally shook with each footstep. Sam and Cas stood their ground as it stomped closer. It paused, lowering its great head down to the level of the tiny humans beneath it, pulling back to roar.

At that point, the nexu suddenly sprang forth, howled, and swatted the beast in the nose with a sharp-clawed paw.

The rancor yelped in pain, holding its bleeding nose with its great claws.

“Sam!” yelled Cas. “Now!” The two bolted forward and struck its legs out from beneath it with some precise swats of their lightsabers. Roaring in pain and surprise, it went down, and Cas leapt up on its neck, bringing his lightsaber straight down through its head for a killing blow.

The crowd was on their feet, cheering, blowing horns, throwing popcorn, and just about anything else a crowd could do. “What now?” asked Dean. As if in answer, the bands struck up again, playing competing fanfares, and quite suddenly the field was swarmed by Imperial troopers.

“You guys again?” sighed Dean, holding up his hands, even though he was unarmed. “I'm too annoyed to even think of a joke.”

The troops elegantly moved to the side to let a small retinue from the stands march through. It was Zachariah the Hutt, Abaddon, and that annoying little ugnaught, Metatron, stamping out on his chubby piggy legs.

“So you’re Abbadon,” grumbled Dean. “Defs not a fan.”

The Sith Lord sauntered over to Dean, grabbed his lapel and eyed him up and down. “This is the _other_ Winchester? Well, aren’t you pretty?”

Cas emitted what could only be described as a low growl. “Get your hands off of him. Now.” Abaddon turned towards Cas, raising an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a little scrawny for an angel?” she asked Cas.

“Aren’t you a bit douche-y for a Sith Lord?” Dean asked her as she cracked a grin, letting him go and striding over towards Sam.

“Silence!” whined Metatron. Several of the troopers raised their weapons and pointed them towards Dean. 

“Hey, calm the fuck down,” Dean told them.

“The glorious Lord Zachariah the Hutt declares....” Metatron began, but he was distracted by a large shadow that passed overhead, like that of a giant bird. Everyone gazed upwards. The crowd – which had grown somewhat quieter – now began to point and mutter. 

Angels. An entire flock of them, gliding down towards the Grand Arena.

“Cas?” whispered Dean, but Castiel just shook his head in surprise.

Abaddon stood in front of Sam and removed the amulet she wore around her neck. “Sam Winchester, I declare you my champion.”

Zachariah the Hutt rumbled unpleasantly in response. “Lady Abaddon! His majesty, Lord Zachariah the Hutt, reserves the right-” Metatron began.

“Shut up!” said Abaddon, waving a hand in Metatron's direction. He fell to his knees, choking and clutching his throat. Abaddon held out her necklace and looped it around Sam’s neck like a noose.

Sam's world exploded.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finished this thing, I did.

Dean gaped as his brother grasped and clawed at Abaddon's necklace. Sam fell to his knees, howling, “No!”

“Sammy!” Dean took a step towards his brother, but he felt Cas's strong arms restraining him.

“Dean, the amulet. Stay back! I think- I think it's a transfer essence,” Cas whispered. 

“What the hell does that mean?”

The area crackled with electricity, and Dean felt his hair stand on end. The faint scent of ozone lingered in the air. Sam finally looked up, his eyes glinting with a weird glow. 

Dean took a step back, horrified. 

_It wasn't Sam._

“Arise, Darth Lucifer!” said Abaddon. She glanced upwards: the angels were coming closer. “And let's blow this joint, honey.” She grabbed Sam's arm and hustled him back towards one of the iron gates, ignoring Zachariah the Hutt's growls of protest. “His brother and the Jedi - kill them,” she told an Imperial officer as she passed him by. “Kill them all.”

The Imperial troops turned and pointed weapons. However, by this time several angels alit, creating a barrier around Cas and Dean. Gabriel and Loki were among their number. 

“Good of you guys to drop by,” said Dean.

“We miss anything?” called Gabriel.

“We'll get you all caught up. Oh, if we don't _die_ first.”

The angels pulled in their wings, and pulled out lightsabers. “The first man to fire a weapon will have the honor of a beheading carried out by myself!” announced a tall, handsome, dark-haired angel.

“Michael,” said Castiel.

_“Brother mine,”_ said Michael, in Enochian. _“We will have words.”_

_“I imagine we will,”_ sighed Cas.

“You two know each other?” asked Dean. But then Dean hit the dirt, as some idiot trooper decided it would be a great idea to shoot at a bunch of angels armed with lightsabers. Shots and saber blows were exchanged. Up in the stands, the crowd cheered and began blowing on their noisemakers again, and at least one of the bands struck up some martial music. Obviously, they took this for more entertainment, even after some of the blaster shots began ricocheting into the stands, causing casualties and the spilling of popcorn. Metatron had recovered from Abaddon’s Force choke enough to give some kind of signal, and several of Zachariah the Hutt’s personal guards joined the melee, though it wasn’t entirely clear which side they were fighting on.

“Cas! We gotta get my brother!” yelled Dean from where he had just kicked a guard in the crotch and stolen his Force pike. “Abaddon is getting away!”

“Gabriel!” said Cas. 

“Go after Abba-douch, kiddo!” said Gabriel.

“We can deal with these weenies!” added Loki as the twins sent some troopers fleeing.

Cas and Dean broke for the open metal gate where Abaddon and Sam had fled. “Which way?” said Dean, desperately scanning up and down the corridor. “Dammit! We’ll never find them!”

“They went thataway!” came a familiar voice. 

“Oh, not you again!” groused Dean as they looked up to see Kevin sitting up in a nook near the ceiling. He was grinning and pointing down the corridor. “How do we know you’re not pointing us at some Imperials again?”

“Not my fault you bozos can’t follow simple directions,” the boy sniffed. “Now, do you want my help, or not?”

Dean looked at Cas, who shrugged. He turned back to Kevin. “No Imperials?”

“You have my word!” He hit some kind of lever, and a hidden passageway opened up in the corridor. Dean and Cas stepped to the threshold. 

“Bad feeling?” asked Dean.

Cas nodded solemnly. “Very bad feeling.”

Dean sighed, and jumped into the passageway, Cas hot on his heels. It was dark, and just got darker as they went.

“So what the fuck is a transfer essence?” asked Dean as they hastened along the dark hall. “And what does it have to do with my brother.”

“It's dark side magic,” Cas explained. “It's said that the Sith Lords discovered the secret of eternal life: a way to preserve their consciousness, even after death. I think that's what struck us about Abaddon's necklace – I think she was keeping Darth Lucifer's essence there.” 

“Lucy was in the necklace?”

“Yes, I believe his spirit was bound there. It is said that if the consciousness is sufficiently powerful, it can be transferred to a new body. Usually, they were said to keep … a clone for these purposes. But they may, in rare cases, usurp another vessel.”

“Vessel? Wait, so this Darth Lucifer character knocked Sam out of his own body?” Dean shivered, but not from the cold. “Can we get him back?”

“I- I don't know Dean. But we'll try, I promise you! Sam is strong – he could fight.”

Dean swore under his breath and made his way around a dim corner.

And then the bottom dropped out. 

“Damn that kid!” shouted Dean as he and then Cas suddenly found themselves sliding down a steep, slippery ramp. He was not much happier when they landed at the bottom, right on top of a couple of guys.

Dean and Cas scrambled to their feet, realizing too late that they had just been dumped out in the middle of a group of Lords of the Sith.

“Jedi scum!” yelled a Sith. 

“Hey, I’m not the Jedi!” Dean protested. “He is!” he said, pointing to Cas, who glowered. And then he swiftly disarmed the guy with a snap of his Force pike. “And I gotta add: I am _not_ having a good day.”

“That pike is not the weapon of a Jedi,” Cas sniffed, though he was rapidly being double-teamed by more guys with lightsabers.

The lead guy, who had an ugly looking scar tracing down across his face through where his nose or snout should have been, raised a nasty-looking double-bladed saber, but ran afoul of Cas’s new best friend, the nexu, who came sliding down from the secret passage and landed on the guy's head, yowling and scratching with razor-sharp claws.

“Ya know, Cas, I think I like cats!” said Dean, as he watched the nexu make cat food of a couple of Sith.

Cas was making use of the general confusion to get some licks in with the Sith, but soon Dean and Cas and their oversized kitty cat found themselves surrounded once again. However, just when things were looking grim, yet another group stormed into the chamber, led by Cas’s friend, Inias.

“Inias!” said Cas as the Jedi ignited their lightsabers and began to pound on the Sith.

“Castiel! Thank goodness you are all right!”

“Are you guys here with the angels?” asked Dean.

“What angels?” asked Inias. Dean and Cas looked at one another and shrugged. “We must stop Darth Lucifer! Our Bothan spies reported that he is here.”

“We must stop Abaddon!” said Cas. “She has Darth Lucifer!”

“Uh, he's kind of my brother,” Dean admitted.

Inias, even in the middle of a rather intense lightsaber battle against a dude who had six arms and three lightsabers, stopped and asked “Darth Lucifer is your brother?” 

“Long story,” said Dean, jabbing another Sith with his Force pike. 

“Abaddon wasn't looking for a weapon,” said Cas. “She was seeking an appropriate vessel for Darth Lucifer's Force ghost.”

“We must stop her!” said Inias. “We must stop them both!”

“Did you see which way they went?”

“The podracers!” said Inias, so once again, Cas and Dean set off, with the faithful nexu padding along behind them. 

“You need to give it a name,” Dean said, as they ran through the twisting underground passages towards the exit.

“Give what a name?”

“Your cat!”

“Um. _Levitmong_?” tried Cas.

“That’s a horrible name!”

“It means cat in Enochian.”

“Cas, you are like the worst cat-namer ever!”

They turned a corner and ended up in the large hangar where some of the podracers had been doing maintenance that morning. There were still several vehicles parked around the room, including the one Dean had driven into the Arena. 

“Cas, even if we find him, you really think Sam can fight off Darth Lucifer?”

Before Castiel could answer, there was a roar of an engine. “What was that?” Dean's question was answered when they were nearly run over by a racer that had just roared to life. Cas grabbed Dean and pulled him back back. They both watched in dismay as the craft took off with Abaddon driving and Sam hanging in back of her.

“Did you see-?” asked Dean. 

“We've got to catch them!” said Cas.

Dean ran to his podracer. He jumped in the cockpit, and – after giving Levitmong strict instructions to “stay” and be a good kitty – Cas climbed in after him.

“Will you be able to pilot this craft at the required speed?” Cas asked.

“How hard could it be?” asked Dean. The podracer lurched forward, nearly sending Cas toppling off the back. The Jedi somehow hung on while Dean steered the racer through the hangar and out the broad doorway, where they ended up in the middle of the stadium, and also in the middle of the ongoing battle, which was now featuring several Imperial regiments, many Sith lords, groups of angels and Jedi knights, a few more wild animals that had gotten loose, and an especially aggressive marching band.

“Stay out of the way!” Dean shouted, though it was not likely anyone could hear him over the roar of the powerful twin turbines. Cas pointed to where Abaddon and Sam were just disappearing from view, and Dean hit the accelerator to hasten after them. 

“We're losing them!” Cas shouted in Dean's ear as they exited the Grand Arena grounds and headed off onto an old race track spanning across the desert.

“No, we're gaining.”

“Are you certain you can drive this vehicle?”

“Of course I can drive this thing!” Dean insisted, just as they went over a small hillock and nearly wiped out. “I meant to do that,” he added. 

Cas gasped and pulled Dean down, and they nearly wiped out once again. “Cas, cut it out!”

“We're being followed!” Cas retorted, pointing to the new blast hole in the racer's side.

“Holy shit!” said Dean. “How many of them?” 

Cas took a moment to look back. “Three, maybe four.” He yanked Dean down again, which nearly caused them to clip a rock formation. “Four, I think,” commented Cas when they came up and Dean struggled for control of the pod. 

“Dammit, I told you I should have added some weapons systems to this thing!”

“Shall I attempt to repel them?”

“Yeah,” said Dean, who was trying to keep the racer from crashing while not letting Abaddon and his brother out of sight. “Given that we got no guns to fight back, repelling them would be a damn good idea right now!” Dean felt Cas suddenly shift around in the crowded cockpit, and then heard the dim buzz of his lightsaber igniting. 

Abaddon suddenly veered off the racing track, and Dean scrambled to make the turn. He heard a fizzle as Cas's lightsaber repelled a couple of blasts, and then an explosion rocked the course. 

“Got one?” Dean asked Cas.

“Two, actually,” said Cas. “But they're gaining. They're only carrying one person apiece, not two.”

“No hopping off, Cas!” Dean would never admit it, but he was getting nervous. It was difficult keeping up with Abaddon, and even though he had always assumed he could pilot just about anything, this podracer was tricky as hell. And...

There was another blast and the racer suddenly veered off the track as one of the pods took a glancing blow. Dean managed to get it straightened up again, but they were losing Abaddon, and he kept hearing more sounds of weapons fire from behind.

“I have an idea,” shouted Cas.

“Now or never, Cas.”

“Trust me.”

Dean couldn't risk looking back, as he was now weaving his way around a bunch of rough rock formations, trying to keep Abaddon in sight, and trying not to get blasted to Kingdom Come. Behind him, Cas gripped him tightly and pointed off up to the right. “I know where Abaddon is headed. There is a shorcut. We can head her off. Turn that way, full speed!”

Dean nodded and veered off the path. It was easier going, as he was out of the rocks, but he soon realized where Cas was taking him. “Cas, these things are not designed for-”

“Full speed!” Cas shouted.

Dean braced himself and gunned it. The podracer rushed up the hill, and over the lip of what turned out to be a steep, steep cliff over a meandering canyon many meters below. For a long moment, the vehicle hung in the air, far short of the other ridge.

And then Dean was yanked from the cockpit, strong arms wrapped tightly around him. “Hold on!” yelled Cas as Dean watched the podracer plummet down towards the canyon floor far below. 

“Cas-”

There was a sound like a soft rush of air, and Dean saw the opposing lip of the canyon come rushing towards him. He heard the podracer explode on the bottom of the canyon, and then there were rushing sounds, as the idiots pursuing them went over and then fell.

And then the earth was underneath him again, and he was trying to run with seemingly a half a ton of Cas on top of him. He stumbled to the ground, still tangled in Cas, breathless, face shoved into the dirt. 

Cas rolled off of him and grabbed him. “Dean! Dean! Are you all right?”

Dean sat in the dirt, puffing, literally too petrified to be scared. Cas was there, holding him by the shoulders. Cas had apparently not had time to doff his shirt before he'd gone wingy, so it had gotten ripped up where his broad, dark wings had magically burst from his back. 

“Ruined your shirt,” said Dean.

“It's not of import,” Cas told him, holding his face. “Are you all right?”

Dean looked down to make sure everything was still there, and then when Cas helped him to his feet and he dusted off, he decided that he was fine but for some minor scrapes. “I thought you told me you guys can't actually _fly_?”

“I may have used some Force power to aid us,” said Cas. “And the momentum of the racer.” He put away his wings with a shrug, and then pulled a saber off his belt and tossed it to Dean. 

“What is this?” asked Dean, eyeing the long grip. “You don't have a blaster on you, do you?”

“Fresh out. And that is a double-bladed lightsaber. It's the weapon of a Sith,” Cas sniffed. “If I were you, I would only ignite one end. You might find it easier to handle than a normal saber.” Dean ignited one buzzing red blade and carefully cut the air. Cas was right, it was not bad, holding it two-handed. 

Cas pointed the way up a small rise. Dean followed, and once they crested the hill, he could see a gleaming starship parked out in the middle of desert.

“That's Aba-douche's ship?” asked Dean. He squinted, and could see a couple of Imperial officers on guard outside.

“We have taken a short cut. I believe we can arrange it so things will be far less welcoming than they had planned.”

Dean grinned and clapped Cas on one bare shoulder. “Let's go.”

 

Sam felt like he had been hitched to a shooting star.

It wasn't just the crazy podracer ride willy-nilly through the canyon, all the while being pursued by some guys shooting weapons and crashing and explosions all over the place.

There was someone else here now, wherever “here” was. He had never felt quite so strong a Force presence as this one. It had completely knocked him for a loop. Whoever this was, Lord Lucifer, he had obviously fallen to the dark side long ago. No – he had _leapt_ into the dark side with both feet, with none of the conflict and self-hatred Sam possessed.

Sam had fought back at first. But he was so tired, and feeling so sick. So many years, wasted at petty pursuits, and now he saw that the path to his old dream was paved in blood.

Maybe it would be easier to just give up and stop fighting?

The podracer lurched to a stop at a remote area, somewhere in the desert wasteland that surrounded Mos Espa. Abaddon had pulled up near a gleaming spacer – nothing like the hunks of junk he and his brother usually rode around in. His brother? Sam distantly remembered hearing a crash somewhere behind them, near one of the canyons. Had that been Dean? It was weird, like it had happened to somebody else. 

“Now, to Korriban!” said Abaddon triumphantly, and Sam found himself following her, climbing out of the racer and starting towards the ship. She halted partway when she spotted the officers lying unconscious on the ramp.

“Going somewhere?” came a very familiar voice. Dean was ambling down the ship's ramp, the angel Jedi at his side.

“Get out of my way,” said Abaddon, raising a hand.

Castiel leaned over to whisper something to Dean. Dean shook his head and replied in a low voice. Castiel scowled, but nodded. 

“Give me back my brother,” said Dean.

“He's not your brother. Not any more.”

“He'll always be my brother.”

“Is that so?” Abaddon turned to Sam. “Darth Lucifer: bring me his heart.”

Dean's eyes went wide as Sam leapt at him.

 

Castiel and Abaddon circled one another. Dean had claimed that he could talk his brother out of this, but Cas wasn't so certain. Regardless, he would have to put it out of his mind right now. He was dueling a Sith Lord with a borrowed lightsaber, and this was after a day when he had been knocked unconscious by some Imperials, tangled with wild animals, dragged on a crazy podracer chase, and then flown himself and Dean across a canyon. In short, he was feeling beaten and battered and exhausted. And even if by some crazy chance he survived this, the worst lay ahead: dealing with his family when they got back to Mos Espa.

There were many reasons why he'd run away from his family and his home to take the Jedi training, and not all of them were terribly admirable.

Abaddon smiled and ignited her saber: blood red, to match her hair and her lipstick and her fingernails.

“Want to duel, little Jedi?” she taunted. “Or shall I put you out of your misery?” She swept up her arm for a Force blow, but Cas managed to side-step, and it barely glanced him. “Oh, have a bit of the dark side in there, do you? There is confusion and doubt swirling around you.”

Cas paused. “You feel no doubt?” he asked her.

“None.”

He stared. “As I'm certain my friend Dean would say, Lady, bite me.” And then he ignited his saber and leapt at her. She was able to parry the blow, but he realized that she was neither as fast nor as skilled as she appeared to think. She had no doubts, and thus did not know her own weaknesses. And so Cas tried to find them, and exploit them best he could. He held his own, through many clashes, though he realized that given his fatigue and his wounds, he would surely tire before her, and that's when he was likely to make a mistake.

_“Sammy! No!”_

Dean and Sam had gone out of sight, up over the ridge, but he heard the call clear as a bell. 

And he knew what he had to do.

Castiel stepped back and broke out his wings. Abaddon moved to strike, but couldn't help pausing to add a taunt. “Oh, so that's why you're a Jedi! Black feather! Your people will have nothing to do with you, you freak!”

That was all the time he needed. He pulled the Force power in and twisted it together.

Abaddon charged, and Cas lashed out at her. But it wasn't anything so crude as a push, it was twined together, straight and sharp, a lance of pure Force energy.

Abaddon stopped. There was now a hole in mid-chest, where her heart hat been. Her eyes went wide, and then she went down.

And then.... Well, Cas wasn't quite sure what had happened. There was nothing left there but an empty robe and a discarded lightsaber. Confused, he squatted down and grabbed the bloody robe, but there was no trace of Abaddon.

“Sammy!”

Cas grabbed the saber.

 

“Sam. Sammy!” Dean blinked up through the blood and bruises. “I know you’re in there, somewhere. Please!”

It had been the most difficult moment of Dean's life – and he hadn't had an easy life. Sam had been possessed by some new guy: that much was clear. But there was still Sam in there. Dean could tell. And it wasn't just this Force hokum. That was his brother, and there was no one telling him any different. 

The duel had been more even than Dean would have expected. Although the saber Dean had constructed had fit into Sam's hand like he was born for it, the gyroscopic dampening had evidently screwed up this Lucifer guy's timing. He kept muttering, “What's wrong with this saber?” 

“It wasn't made for you, asshole!” Dean finally hollered back. “Now give it back!” And then he'd gone after him again. The thing was, he didn't want to hurt Sam. And he had a feeling that Sam or Lucifer who whoever was in there was pulling his punches. Well, at least he did until Sam threw away the lightsaber in disgust and hit him with a good left-right combo with the Force. And then Sam hit him again. And again. And again.

“Sammy, I know you're in there somewhere. You've got to take control! Push the bastard-” Dean clawed at his throat. Lucifer stood over Dean and growled – literally growled. He brought his fingers together, crushing out Dean’s breath, his life.

Smack! There was a flash of dark wings, and suddenly Darth Lucifer was sprawled in the dirt, his mouth bleeding.

“Get away from him!” Castiel hissed. 

Dean pleaded, “Cas! Stop! It’s Sammy in there! My brother.”

Ignoring Dean’s pleas, Castiel stormed over to Lucifer. “You touch another hair on him, I will burn you to atoms,” Cas snarled at Lucifer.

“I have his brother,” Lucifer declared. 

“The brother who walked away from him.”

Lucifer scrambled to his feet. “Like I walked away from you, brother.”

“Say what?” asked Dean.

“Yes,” said Cas simply.

Lucifer was glaring at Cas. “You realize, dear brother, that if by some slim chance you wrest me from Sam Winchester, my ghost will be doomed to wander?”

Cas ignited one lightsaber. Then the other.

“Better start running,” said Cas.

Lucifer smirked, and then ignited the double-bladed saber Dean had been carrying, and the two circled one another. 

“Dammit, Sammy,” Dean muttered. There had to be a way!

There was a flash, and a hum, and suddenly, Cas and Lucifer were dueling, Force beams clashing, whipping around. Lucifer, using Sam Winchester's body, had height and reach on Cas, but obviously was not used to this, so was unable to take advantage. And Cas – Cas was already beat to hell, Dean could sense it from where he sat, from where he'd dragged his sorry body, out of the main action. So much for his fucking Force sensitivity! All he could do was...

Wait!

If Lucifer had used some fancy dancy Sith shit to push Sam out of his body, maybe Dean could do the same trick with Lucy? Seriously, if anybody knew Sammy, it was Dean. He'd been there for every scraped knee, every bad dream, every silly crush – he knew everything about that kid.

Lightsabers hummed and flashed as the two warriors clashed. A duel to the death. Dean needed to stop this. Weren't you supposed to clear your mind first? That wasn't even possible. Besides, Dean didn't clear his mind to pilot his damn ship, or build sabers, or anything else that Cas claimed he was using the Force for. 

Dean threw all his attention towards Lucifer. If Sammy was still in there, he'd pick it up. He concentrated, and called out, in his mind. “Hey, Sammy!”

_Dean?_

“Hey!”

_You don't have to shout, you know._

“Sammy, don't be a jerk! You have to push out Lucifer. He's going to kill Cas!”

_Not my problem._

“It is your problem! He's using your body.”

Somewhere, through the Force, Sam snorted. _You and your dumb angel boyfriend._

'He's not my boyfriend. Well, I mean, he's sort of my boyfriend. Is he my boyfriend? We sort of got together, you know, while you were out being a Sith.”

_Too much information!_

Dean sighed and sat back. This was taking too long. Cas and Lucifer/Sam were still going at it, but Cas looked like he was down to one saber. Dammit! “Sam, you've got to push Lucy out of there!”

_I wanted to be part of something, you know? But I ended up mucking around with the scum of the earth._

“Hey, so did I.”

_But you're not...._

“Yeah, I am. I'm talking to you, right?”

_Wait! When did you get Force-sensitive, Dean?_

“Since forever, dummy. There can be more than one in a family. Duh! Now, kick him out. Before he kills Cas!”

He could actually feel Sam's bitchface right now. _It's always gotta be about you, doesn't it?_

“God dammit, Sammy!” yelled Dean. He was now on his feet, yelling aloud. “Come out and fight me! Bitch!”

Lucifer twisted, and something fell out of his pocket, drifting slowly to the floor of the desert.

A black feather.

Lucifer jerked to a halt. He dropped his saber, put his hands to his head, and sunk to his knees, howling, “Noooo!”

There was fizzling, like an electrical current buzzed through the area. And then Sam sprang at Dean, wrestling him down. “You jerk! You selfish jerk!”

“Sammy?”

Cas was there, his lightsaber going for Sam's neck.

“Cas, no!” Dean shouted. But Cas somehow flicked through the amulet's chain. It fell to the ground, where Cas snatched it up.

“It's OK, Cas,” said Dean, grabbing Cas by the shoulder. “It's all right. It's Sam. It's Sammy now.”

“How can you tell?” asked Cas.

“You jerk!” Sam hollered. 

“I can tell,” laughed Dean. “Welcome back, bitch!”

Cas suddenly whirled around, still gripping the amulet, and appeared to stare at something off in the distance. Dean peered across the desert, and thought he saw, just for a fraction of a second, a ghostly image hovering there. “It was your choice,” said Cas. And then the image dissipated, and they were alone. 

 

Dean had wanted to just hotwire Abaddon's starship and blast out of there. But Cas had demurred – he evidently thought he needed to talk to his family first. 

And Sam didn't seem to have an opinion about much of anything right now. He stood, staring off at the distance. 

Dean and Cas were still arguing when the bantha came riding up. “Hey, you missed all the fun,” Dean yelled up to Gabriel and Loki. Neither of them smiled.

“We need to talk to our brother,” Gabriel told him, leaping down onto the desert.

“Alone,” added Loki.

Dean stood watching as Cas apologetically retreated a few steps away with his brothers. They began to speak, but in a strange, low language, soft as a whisper of wings. 

Dean scowled, and then muttered, “I'm goin' over there.” He stopped when he felt Sam's hand on his shoulder.

“I- I could have choked you.”

“But you didn't,” said Dean, though a hand went up, as if by his own devices, to his throat. “You didn't.”

“I could have killed you.”

Dean spared another look at Cas and his brothers, and then pulled his full attention back to Sam. “You weren't _you_ , Sammy. She tried to hex you with that screwy necklace. But it didn't work.”

“Dean.... We need to talk.”

“About what?” Dean asked, his eyes drifting back to Cas.

“I don't think it's gonna be safe for me to work with you.”

“What?” Dean waved a dismissive hand. “Don't be weird. You're my brother.” And then, as if that was the end of it, he about-faced and strode over to Cas.

Cas appeared utterly terrified. “Dean. I need to go back. My- My father is here.” 

Dean draped an arm around the angel's shoulders. “Hey, Cas, you just faced down two Sith Lords.”

“But, Dean, this is my family.”

Dean shook his head and glanced back at Sam. “Yeah, family stuff. But Sammy and I will be by you, right, Sammy?”

Sam blinked uncertainly. Cas was looking at him, and Sam thought he saw hope in the angel's eyes. “I- Yeah, Dean. We will.” 

 

Whatever had happened in the Grand Arena, it was finally over. Most of the crowd had fled, but a small gathering remained in the field, primarily the angels and a number of Jedi. And Castiel's cat of course, which had evidently been patiently waiting for them all this time. Cas stood idly scratching it behind the ears while everyone else gave the creature a wide berth.

“I told you: angels shouldn't be allowed in the Jedi order,” groused a globular individual wearing brown Jedi robes.

“Humans to the dark side fall as well,” stated a small green female tridactyl.

“Yocee?” said Sam.

“Master Yocee,” corrected Inias, who was standing beside her. “She was my master, as well as Castiel's.”

“Wait, you know her, Sam?” asked Dean. “OK, when did you meet a Jedi master?”

“Uh, I kinda of thought she was, you know, working for the other side,” Sam admitted.

“Thought what you would, you did,” Yocee told him.

“Wait a minute!” said Dean. “When were you talking to a Sith Lord?”

“Uh, the bounty on Cas?” said Sam, who seemed to be trying to make himself small. “She was the one who told me. And claimed they'd been watching me.”

“Watching this one, we have been,” supplied Yocee, turning to Dean. “And you.”

“You guys not have any good movies or what?” asked Dean.

“We have the amulet,” said Cas, holding it out to her. 

“I'll take that!” announced Crowley, who chose this moment to come fluttering in, accompanied by Kevin.

“What?” said Dean. “You're not gettin' anything! You betrayed us to the Sith! _Twice!_ ”

“I don't recall this,” said Crowley.

“The kid did!” said Dean.

Crowley twirled around and beheld his young assistant. “Kevin, did you betray them to the Sith?” he asked. Kevin shrugged. Crowley grinned and clapped him on the back. “Good work, my boy! There may be hope for you yet. What did you get?”

“I wanted to be released from slavery,” Kevin told him.

“What?” asked Crowley, his attention now completely focused on Kevin. “You can't do that. I'll increase your salary!”

“Wait,” said Dean. “You _pay_ your slave? Isn't that … weird?”

Crowley fluttered over to Dean. “Have you met this young one's mother yet?”

“Uh, no.”

Crowley rolled his eyes. “Come along now, Kevin.”

“Can we get ice cream?” asked Kevin. “Beebleberry?”

“Yes, yes, we shall get ice cream.”

Dean shook his head as he watched them walk away. 

“Castiel?” said a newcomer.

Cas abruptly stopped petting his nexu and straightened up. The speaker was not terribly impressive: a short-statured man who looked like he'd just rolled out of bed. He was unshaven, his hair was askew, and his eyes were red-rimmed. Michael walked beside him, his broad, white wings out and partially unfurled.

“Hello, Father,” said Cas. “Um, these are my friends, the Winchester brothers, Dean and Sam. This is my father, Lord Charles Shurley, of Iego.” Lord Shurley nodded towards Dean and Sam.

“How did you know I was here, Father?” Cas ventured.

It was Michael who replied. “Gabriel and Loki.”

“Sorry for ratting you out, bro,” said Gabriel.

“We thought we needed help,” added Loki.

“Castiel,” said Michael. “You were supposed to come home.” His wings arched up, in what looked very much like a threat gesture. “Our family requires this alliance!”

“Then why don't _you_ marry the Corellian chick?” grumbled Dean, causing Michael to arch his wings at Dean.

Cas glanced between Dean and his brother, and then broke out his own dark wings. A gasp went up from some of his fellow angels, but Dean broke into a grin, and Cas nodded at him. He then turned back to Michael, his wings spread out. “I had my duty to the Jedi order.”

“That does not overrule family.” Michael, once again, arched up his wings.

Cas's wings repeated the gesture. “I know quite well what my so-called family thinks of me.” 

Lord Shurley finally stepped between them. “Boys! Enough! Put the wings away already!” Cas and Michael continued glaring at one another for a moment. Dean put a hand on Cas's shoulder, and Cas brought down his wings. Michael, after a brief pause, followed.

Lord Shurley appeared very tired. “Cassie, we need you to form this alliance.”

“I can no longer fulfill my duties, Father,” said Cas. He turned to Yocee. “And I am afraid I am no longer fit for the Jedi order. I'm sorry, Master.”

“What trouble, there is?” inquired Yocee.

“I am-” Cas glanced at Dean. “I have violated my vow of chastity.”

Yocee and Lord Shurley exchanged a glance. 

And then both of them burst out laughing.

“If expelled from the Jedi order for that we did, no one left we would have,” said Yocee with a big smile.

“Father, what-“ Michael began, but Lord Shurley waved him off. “Eh, I didn’t much like that Corellian gal anyway.”

“Talk with my former padawan, I would like,” Yocee told Lord Shurley, who nodded. Yocee gestured to Castiel, who walked off with her, their voices low.

“I don’t know about you boys, but I could use a drink,” Lord Shurley told Sam and Dean. He jerked his head, and the Winchesters, after the exchange of a very confused glance, followed him. 

“Hey,” said one of the Jedi. “Where did the amulet go?”

Dean chortled.

 

The cantina was empty, except for Sam, Dean, Lord Shurley, and a quiet bartender. 

“Thanks, Lord Shurley,” said Dean as the silent barkeep brought the first round. 

“Call me Chuck,” said the angel patriarch. And then he proceeded to gulp down his drink in one go, and signal for more. “So I assume you’re the reason my son broke his vows,” he told Dean.

“Uh, I guess that would be-“

Lord Shurley looked thoughtful. “I worry about him. Castiel. I wasn’t really there for him. Not the way I was for his brothers. I took it really hard when his mother … you know. I had never wanted to rule. But with her…. Anyway, Lucifer.... He was always spoiled, I guess. He and Michael didn't get along. But when he fell to the dark side.... And Michael…. You can see, Michael took to ruling in my stead. It’s not an excuse or anything….”

“Lord Shurley,” said Dean, interrupting the monologue as the bartender delivered another round.

“Chuck.”

_“Lord Shurley,”_ Dean repeated, in a tone that made both the angel and Sam glance up at him. “Look, man, I get it. We lost our mom. And then we also lost our father. But, dude, you need to step up now. Cas is a great guy, wings and all. But he thinks he’s bad luck. And it doesn’t help that you sent his brothers to slap him in carbonite and haul him back like cargo.”

“Loki and Gabriel are a bit … _unorthodox_.”

“He’s a Jedi. And a damned good one. Look, our own dad made some mistakes. But he was there when we needed it. He’s the one who kept my brother from ending up at the Sith Academy. You still wanna be a Sith, Sammy?”

Sam smiled into his drink. “No. No, I don’t Dean.”

“You matter,” Dean told Lord Shurley. “Don’t forget that. And look, you got your family, right? Gabe and Loki are a bit weird-”

“Weird and creepy,” supplied Sam.

“Yeah, they _seem_ creepy, but they're basically OK guys. And Michael seems like a douche-”

“He _is_ a douche,” said Sam.

“Yeah, I guess so. But Cas – he's like the best guy I've ever known.”

“And believe me, my brother has 'known' a lot of guys,” laughed Sam.

Dean glared at his brother. “Hey. I'm the one who dragged your bony ass back from the dark side, remember?”

“Actually, Cas helped.”

“Well, OK, maybe so,” Dean admitted. “And you know, you want to marry somebody in your family off to a Corellian, seems to me like you're the one who's a little lonely here.”

Lord Shurley blinked. “I- I hadn't thought of that! I don't like the girl, but I do like one of her aunts. Becky, I think her name is.”

“See?” said Dean.

“You know, we already have a caterer picked out.”

“Well, just change the names on the invitations then!” said Dean.

Lord Shurley was already standing up. “Yes, the invitations. You're invited, of course!”

“That will be great,” said Dean, who was already imagining the wedding banquet food. It would probably be pretty great. And maybe there would be pretty bridesmaids? Not for him, of course, as he sort of had a thing with Cas. But maybe for Sammy?

The doorbell jingled, and a small party entered, including Cas, Gabriel and Loki and the other angels, and a few of the Jedi.

“Castiel!” said Lord Shurley, who stood and walked over to his son. Cas stood, nervously scratching his nexu behind its ears. The creature purred, to the obvious distress of Michael, who was standing nearby. Lord Shurley put a hand on Cas's shoulder. “Castiel. I just want to say how proud I am of you. And- And I think your mother would have been very proud as well.”

“Really?” asked Cas, who seemed a bit misty-eyed.

“I'm sorry. I should have been there for you. But I'm glad you had Master Yocee. And friends like the Winchesters.” He waved a hand towards Sam and Dean. “And, uh-” But whatever he was going to say next was swallowed up, as Cas suddenly burst out his wings again, and engulfed his father in an awkward but most sincere hug. 

“Uh, there there,” said Chuck. He finally managed to extricate himself from this unseemly demonstration of feelings, and said, “Now, I need to get back to Iego, we have things to arrange.”

“You're going to cancel the wedding, Father?” asked Michael.

“Oh, no! There will still be a wedding. I'm going to propose! If she'll have me.”

Michael looked puzzled. Lord Shurley started to make his way out of the door, accompanied by several of Cas's brothers. “Oh, no,” whispered Michael. “Are you talking about Becky?” he asked, just as they reached the door. 

“Becky?” asked Gabriel with a grin. He and Loki had lingered behind.

“I think so,” said Dean.

Both Loki and Gabriel burst into gales of laughter. “Oh, god, that's gonna be a riot,” said Loki.

“You guys are comin', right?” asked Gabriel. 

“This is gonna be awesome!” chortled Loki. And then the twins were out the door, following their father and brothers.

Yocee and Inias now approached Sam and Dean.

“A new assignment, Castiel has,” Yocee told Sam and Dean. “Mmmm. You two.” Cas smiled, and his dark wings arched up high.

“Are we going to be his padawans?” Sam asked.

“Ugh,” opined Dean.

Yocee chuckled. “Too old, you both are. And two padawans, too much, even for a Jedi master, they would be.”

“Just as well,” said Dean. “I can’t see Samantha cutting his hair into that Jedi braid thing.”

“Hey!” said Sam. 

Yocee was shaking her head. “Sam and Dean Winchester, strong in the Force, you are. Wasted, this power should not be. From now on, to Master Castiel you will listen, mmm, yes. And mindful you will be. And not to the dark side, stray,” she finished with a significant glance at Sam.

“I’m kind of through with the dark side,” Sam admitted. “It, uh, gave me a headache.”

“This is a dangerous world,” said Inias. “Abaddon and Lucifer had very great dark side powers. Far greater than we had imagined.”

“Yes. To Inias, you must listen. New powers, the Sith have. Need you, we do.”

“Look, Yocee, you Jedi dudes seem cool, and we wanna help,” said Dean, “but … we still have a family business to run.”

“Yes, of that, we are aware. Bounty hunters! A good cover, it will be. And some assistance to you, we can provide you.”

“Assistance?” The Winchesters glanced at one another. 

“Your starship,” said Inias. “As I recall, the hyperdrive was failing.”

“Well, sort of,” said Dean.

“Dean, it was a piece of shit,” said Sam.

“It could have used some tuning!”

Yocee smiled and went out the back door, beckoning everyone to follow her outside.

There was a sleek, black starship parked out in back. Dean literally gasped. He walked around the entire perimeter, just to take it in.

“Your assistance, we appreciate,” said Yocee. “A gift, we offer.”

“You're _giving_ me this ship?” asked Dean, his voice pitched several octaves above it's usual timbre.

“They're giving _us_ the ship,” Sam grumbled.

“Continue your business, you will. More favors, we may ask.”

“You got it, Master Yocee!” said Dean.

“Dangerous, they might be,” warned Yocee.

“I consider the Winchester brothers now and forever under my protection,” Cas announced. He let his wings spread out, and then grabbed the Winchesters and pulled them into a sort of hug. 

“Whoa!” said Dean. Wing hugs were pretty awesome. The nexu looked a little put out by this, so Cas reached over to scratch it on its head.

“I'm sold!” said Dean. “Let's check it out.” He walked up the ramp, and Cas and the nexu followed. “And you,” Dean said, addressing the cat. “No sharpening claws on the upholstery!”

Sam remained down below. He turned to Yocee and Inias. “Master Yocee. Um, maybe this is just me?”

“Tell me, you may, Sam Winchester.”

Sam hesitated. “I have this strange feeling. You know, Lucifer? Like, he's not gone.”

Yocee and Inias gazed at one another for a moment. “Your feelings, you should trust.”

“What you said about a dangerous world?” asked Sam.

“We are only beginning to learn some things about the power of the dark side,” said Inias. “Be mindful.”

“The Force will be with you,” said Yocee. And then she and Inias took their leave, and Sam followed the others into the ship, raising the gangway behind him.

“So what's the deal with Yocee?” Dean was asking as he prowled around the cockpit.

“What do you mean?” asked Cas, who was standing, petting his cat.

“Talk backwards like this, she does. Annoying, it gets. Backwards, a headache, it gives me. I mean, the fuck, what?”

Sam burst out laughing. 

“Also, dude,” said Dean, picking up a cloak and wrapping it around Cas shoulders. “You gotta figure out some wardrobe solutions!”

“I'm sorry?” asked Cas.

Dean sat down in the pilot's chair. “You can't be ripping your shirt every time you burst out your wings!”

The nexu yowled and leapt up into the copilot's seat.

“Also, you need to tell this thing to stay off the furniture!” Cas spoke softly to the cat, which leapt down, and then he took its place in the copilot's seat next to Dean. Sam sat down behind them and made sure to strap himself in. The nexu curled up on the floor beside him, and he decided to risk petting it, getting a soft growly purr in response.

“Anything more questions?” said Cas as Dean readied the ship.

“Yeah. What do we wear to an angel wedding?”

“What?” asked Cas.

“Punch it!”

And they were off.


End file.
